Steven Kruijswijk placed seventh in the Tour of Britain. The result was based on his performance in the fifth stage, which had an uphill finish. Trainee Koen Bouwman attacked in the final stage but wasn’t able to hold André Greipel (Lotto – Soudal) for the stage win. Edvald Boasson Hagen (MTN – Qhubeka) won the general classification.

“The final stage was a fast circuit race with a lot of twisting and turning," sports director, Nico Verhoeven said after the race. “It was our goal to have Koen in the breakaway and he succeeded. He had to push hard for it, but made it in the end.

"Koen had the chance to show himself as our trainee this week. There’s no better way to do that than being in the break in the last day of a stage race. He showed that he is able to ride many race kilometres this week. He broke his personal record of daily race kilometres three times and proved that he is able to recover from it quickly.”

Good shape
Verhoeven was satisfied with Steven Kruijswijk’s performance as well. “His result was based on his performance in the fifth stage, which had an uphill finish. With 500 metres to go, he was riding for the third place in that stage. The differences are small, so a third place would have been possible for him too. But it didn’t turn out that way. His seventh place was the highest possible in the end. Two riders were obviously better than the rest and Steven was just behind them. He proved that he is in good shape.”

High level
“This race started in an annoying way for us,” Verhoeven continued. “We lost three riders quickly due to crashes and were left with three men. They did a good job afterwards. Bram Tankink reached a high level this week. He supported Steven perfectly and helped Koen, as well. I’m satisfied with the way we ended this Tour of Britain.”