Haedo wins GP De Denain Porte du Hainaut

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Juan Jose Haedo (Saxo Bank) scored his first victory of the 2012 season on a dreary day at the GP de Denain. The Argentinean out-sprinted Alex Rasmussen (Garmin-Barracuda) and Andrea Guardini (Farnese Vini-Selle Italia) to take the team's first European win of the season.

The team managed to set Haedo up for the win despite losing riders in a crash just 10km from the finish. Saxo Bank director Fabrizio Guidi said the team decided to race aggressively, and worked to bring back the two-man breakaway of Remi Cusin (Team Type 1-Sanofi) and FDJ-BigMat's David Boucher.

"We had the duo under the control until ten kilometers from the finish line where we lost three guys in a crash and luckily, JJ (Haedo) made it around the pile-up and in the bunch sprint, with great support from his teammates, he was superb.

"It's a relief for JJ and for the whole team as it always is when you succeed. I've seen JJ getting stronger and stronger and I knew it was only a matter of a short period of time before he made it."

Cusin and Boucher attacked from the gun and pulled out a lead of nearly nine minutes over the 199km race, but as the peloton entered  the local circuits with three laps to go, there was just 30 seconds separating the pair from the chasers.

Simon Lambert-Lemay (Spidertech) attacked to try and bridge up, but a counter by Nico Sijmens (Cofidis) et Kevin Lalouette (Roubaix-Lille Métropole) and subsequent chase nullified the move. Tosh Van der Sande (Lotto-Belisol) put in a move on the penultimate lap, and as Cusin lost contact, the young Belgian made contact with Boucher.

 A counter-attack by Jimmy Engoulvent (Saur-Sojasun) caught and dropped those two, and the Frenchman was joined by Clément Koretzky (La Pomme Marseille) and Matthieu Ladagnous (FDJ-BigMat), but the escapees could not resist the power of the peloton.

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