Teunissen second, Vanmarcke fourth in London
Mike Teunissen and Sep Vanmarcke came close to the victory in the Prudential Ride London on Sunday. Vanmarcke tried to solo to the win, but three riders were able to catch him with two kilometres to go. Jean-Pierre Drucker (BMC Racing Team) prevented Teunissen from grabbing the victory for Team LottoNL-Jumbo.
“It’s a real shame that we didn’t win," Sports Director Richard Plugge said after the race. “Everything was running smoothly actually. I expected that around 50 riders would have been able to survive the hills and maybe a small group could escape out of that bunch. We had to be there afterwards.
"When you look at that, we were in the race every time. We were part of almost all the interesting breakaways and Sep and Mike were in the decisive one. Sep gave everything he had for the win, but was facing a lot of headwind during his solo. That didn’t help him. Mike did a great job. But you want to win the race, and we didn’t. That’s too bad.”
Attentive
Vanmarcke, who was at the forefront of the fight, agreed. “I took the matters in my hand on the penultimate climb," he said looking back. “There were 70 kilometres to go from there. From that moment, it became a real fight. It was good to see that the whole team was attentive. In the end, a group of eight riders were able to stay in front and Mike and I were there. With 15 kilometres to go, I tried to finish it on my own. I was able to push through during the first five kilometres, but afterwards I was slowing down a little bit. It’s a pity that they caught me with two kilometres to go.”
Under pressure
The situation was still promising for Team LottoNL-Jumbo because Teunissen was there as well. “We had to try something because there were a lot of good sprinters in that breakaway," Teunissen said. “We did that, but it was not good enough, unfortunately. I tried to put Ben Swift (Team Sky) and Drucker under pressure. Swift chased me two times and broke himself. I was close in the end and I think that I should have waited for the sprint. I’m fed up with that.”
