Van Avermaet wins stage 6

Image 1 of 8

Greg Van Avermaet won a photo finish sprint in the Tour of Austria stage 6 out of an escape group which crossed the line only seconds ahead of the chasing peloton. The BMC Racing team rider nosed out Matthew Brammeier of HTC-Highroad, with Leopard Trek's Daniele Bennati taking third. The peloton crossed the finish line only six seconds behind the 11 men in the break.

The top riders in the GC all crossed the line in the same time. Fredrik Kessiakoff of Astana continues to lead ahead of Mauro Santambrogio (BMC) and Leopold König (NetApp).

"I am really happy. It's been a long year for me,” Van Avermaet said. “I think it was two years ago that I last won a race. I'm really happy to do it in the BMC Racing Team jersey, too. With 4km to go, the gap was only 25 seconds, so it was really close. I just kept trying to keep the speed up and tried to go for the victory in the sprint. I wasn't sure about (Daniele) Bennati because he's a really strong sprinter. He went with 300 meters to go. I tried to catch his wheel and in the end I was a little bit faster."

Van Avermaet also took over the points jersey, which he said "was not so important to me. But I wanted to have a stage win. I've had a really good year. The only thing I didn't have was a win. So for me, today is really special."

The sixth stage was just about as flat as it gets in Austria, with only three category four climbs. The stage got off to a nervous start, until an escape group formed.

Daniele Bennati (Leopard Trek), Robert Wagner (Leopard Trek), Matthew Brammeier (HTC-Highroad), Jaroslaw Marycz (Saxo Bank-SunGard), Gregory Rast (RadioShack), Greg Van Avermaet (BMC), Nikolay Trusov (Katusha), Michael Barry (Sky), Andrey Mizurov (Astana), Francesco Ginanni (Androni-Giacattoli), Aleksejs Saramotins (Cofidis), Daniele Ratto (GEOX) and De Negri (Farnese Vini) built up a lead of up to four minutes.

Skil-Shimano and Team NetApp led the peloton in cutting that down to around the two-minute mark, but the group held doggedly to its lead. Approaching the 10km marker, Wagner and Rast were the first to be dropped.

The remaining 11 managed to stay together and stay away until the end, with Van Avermaet taking the narrowest of wins.

Full Results