Navardauskas wins Circuit Sarthe overall

Nacer Bouhanni of Cofidis won the last stage of Circuit de la Sarthe-Pays de la Loire in Le Lude as well as he opened his record book of the 2015 season with stage 1 in Varades. A change of leader occurred on the last day as Ramunas Navardauskas of Cannondale-Garmin repeated his overall victory and became the fourth rider to win the race back to back since the event became a professional affair, following the path of Bernard Hinault (1975-76), Jean-François Bernard (1992-93) and Melchior Mauri (1997-98).

"To repeat any win two years in a row is huge, plus the way I won it today, it's impressive," commented Navardauskas. "I'm happy with myself, I hope the team is happy with how we rode since we took the command of the peloton with Cofidis on day 1 and kept working hard until we got the overall victory we wanted."

Oleg Tinkov might pretend that no one is interested in "those provincial races that get no TV coverage", but the finale of the 63rd Circuit de la Sarthe-Pays de la Loire was a thrilling one that is seldom seen in the World Tour.

Navardauskas won two intermediate sprints and took the six seconds he needed to dethrone Manuele Boaro who was pretty unlucky. "My chain dropped three times," the Italian told Cyclingnews. "It happened precisely when I was contesting the third intermediate sprint." Therefore, he couldn't overtake his lead out man Michael Kolar who uselessly claimed one second of time bonus.

Following that last intermediate sprint with 17km to go, Navardauskas kept going and broke clear with Katusha's Tiago Machado who was also in search of the yellow jersey. It took more than one lap of 8.5km to Cofidis to bridge the gap while Boaro managed to make his way back to the peloton after a bike change due to his mechanical. Bouhanni easily won the final sprint.

"With two stage wins, it's been a good Circuit de la Sarthe for me," said the Frenchman who got fined 100CHF for riding with a Cofidis tracksuit rather than the distinctive green jersey of leader of the points classification. "I hadn't won until this week, my early part of the season hasn't been an easy one but I knew the form was there. Only the win was missing. It's been difficult today because of the heat and the fast pace of the race. I'll ride the GP of Denain next week and I'll take a break after that."

"I don't think that I'm a sprinter," echoed Navardauskas. "I wouldn't have been able to sprint against Bouhanni and those guys. It's all due to the work of my team. With strong guys like Alex Howes and Nathan Haas in front of me, I couldn't lose. Even being the youngest team in the World Tour, we've showed that we can fight and compete with big teams like [Tinkoff-]Saxo and Movistar. When Machado attacked, I had to go with him, then why not trying to stay away? We were two strong boys. At least we tried but I wasn't worried that a counter attack could take place."

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