There were a few hills in the final of the fourth stage, but they were not hard enough to drop the sprinters. The last kilometre was narrow and twisty. Kooij stayed ahead of a crash that included the Van Dijke brothers and finished it off.

“It feels good to win, but it’s not nice to see a lot of guys crash”, Kooij said after his second victory.

Sports director Maarten Wynants was proud. “The guys did everything perfectly. You can see that the confidence is high after the results of the last few days. Olav was in the right position and won by a large margin, so that was great. Unfortunately, Mick and Tim were involved in the crash, but they are okay. Tomorrow is the queen stage, but the finish is not uphill. We are close in the general classification with Mick. The guys are in good shape condition, so hopefully it will come together in the finale and we can compete for the win again.”