Tour de France stage winner Jan Bakelants (RadioShack) has put himself in a strong position for further success after finishing fifth in the penultimate stage of the Eneco Tour on Sunday. Although a respectable result, the Belgian rider was expecting more after spending time in the race defining breakaway.
"It's a pity that I didn't have good legs today. I expected so much from this stage," said Bakelants.
Radioshack director Dirk Demol, on the other hand, was satisfied with Bakelants' efforts on 'bad' legs.
"If he has bad legs and still performs so well in a short but very hard stage with three times over the Chambralles and Redoute, we are still happy with that," said Demol. "There were riders all over the course, the stage was so difficult."
Demol also believes that the team can take advantage of the expected aggression from Omega Pharma-Quickstep as the race heads into the final stage on Sunday.
"[Tom] Dumoulin was surprisingly strong on La Redoute. In theory it will be very hard to beat him, but the real question is how strong is his Argos team?" Questioned Demol. "Omega Pharma have [Zdenek] Stybar and [Sylvan] Chavanel. They will not give up so maybe we can take advantage of that."
The Eneco Tour concludes with a 'mini Flanders' stage that sees riders tackle many of the Flemish cobbles used during the spring classics. With seven riders within 50 seconds of the overall lead expect to see multiple attacks as teams compete for valuable WorldTour points.
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