Albert solos to victory in Oostmalle

After a few rough weeks Niels Albert (BKCP-Powerplus) managed to end his season in a positive way by winning the final 'cross of the season in sunny Oostmalle, Belgium.

Albert won the final round of the Bpost Bank Trophy (BPo) cyclo-cross series after a long solo effort with a small gap on Tom Meeusen (Telenet-Fidea). Sven Nys (Crelan-AA Drink) finished far off the pace in Oostmalle but his tenth place at 1:30 was more than good enough to secure the overall win in the bpost Bank series.

"This is a race where I always tend to perform well. I'm not in the best form of my life but this course has no secrets for me. I can always do more over here than in another race," Albert said at the post-race press chat. "After losing the Superprestige series last weekend I received a mental blow. I then decided to look at this race as if it was the first race of the new 2014-15 season. I wanted to start the season in a positive way. The win today offers some peace of mind to head into the off-season."

Albert has a strong record on the fast course in the forest next to the military runway; it's Albert's sixth win in Oostmalle. This time around Albert allowed Corné van Kessel (Telenet-Fidea) to lead the opening lap, but then he stormed forward. Only Meeusen and Nys managed to hop on the Albert-train.

At the intermediate sprint halfway into the second lap, Nys briefly took over the command and grabbed the fifteen bonus seconds. Albert quickly took back control and set a blistering pace when cornering through the seemingly endless sandy twists and turns.

Early on in the third lap Nys sat up and literally waved goodbye to Albert, giving way for Meeusen. The latter struggled hard to get back on Albert's wheel. By the end of that third lap Albert looked back over his shoulder and spotted an overheated Meeusen at short distance.

When hitting the fourth lap Albert wasted no time getting rid of Meeusen once again. From there, both Albert and Meeusen were time-trialing against each other. The gap grew by two seconds every lap until it was 16 seconds when hitting the final lap.

"I managed to close the gap and clocked the fastest lap of the race but the paid for that in the following lap," Meeusen said. "If I came back I would have won in the sprint."

In the meanwhile, Kevin Pauwels (Sunweb-Napoleon Games) rode away from the chase group in the third lap and remained in third position until the finish line.

Lars van der Haar (Rabobank Development Team) tried to put Pauwels under pressure but the young Dutchman never managed to close the gap.

"It wasn't easy," Pauwels said. "I rode to hold off Lars rather than trying to get back to Tom."

Eddy van IJzendoorn (NATU Balans) managed his best result of the season by claiming fifth place in the sprint against Dieter Vanthourenhout (Sunweb-Napoleon Games) and Philipp Walsleben (BKCP-Powerplus). Belgian champion Sven Nys didn't bother with that sprint. He cruised to the finish line a little later while celebrating his ninth overall win in the bpost Bank series. He kept an advantage of 2:25 on Albert and a massive 7:10 on Meeusen.

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