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Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost) claimed his second stage win of the race on stage 4 and took the general victory on the Région Pays de la Loire Tour after an exhilarating combat on the punchy 174.9km route from Marolles-les-Braults to Le Mans.
The Dutchman celebrated over the road after he kicked away from Clément Venturini (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), who took third, and narrowly held off a cost from Benoît Cosnefroy (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) in second.
Van den Berg benefitted from nice work by teammate Ben Healy within the finale because the Irish champion stored the tempo excessive, chased down a late assault from the pre-stage race chief Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) and had sufficient to finish a leadout.
Van den Berg moved into the race chief’s yellow jersey on the final after beginning the fourth stage only one second behind Costiou to assert each his sixth and seventh professional victories and first general GC win.
The Dutchman truly moved into the digital lead earlier within the day after taking three bonus seconds in Vivoin at one of many intermediate dash factors, however his stage win highlighted his versatility as rather more than only a sprinter.
“I didn’t do it on my own, that’s for positive! This win is extra a group victory than certainly one of my very own,” Van den Berg stated on the group’s web site.
“I’ve by no means seen something prefer it earlier than, how we pulled that off as a group.”
Van den Berg went on to credit score the work carried out all day by Jardi van der Lee, Darren Rafferty and Lukas Nerurkar to each place him for the intermediate dash and remaining few laps however highlighted Healy as the highest supporter on the day.
“Everybody put in the identical effort at the moment after which Ben did a extremely unimaginable lead-out,” Van den Berg stated. “I simply did the dash, that was the one factor I needed to do.”
As the riders hit the punchy native lap round Le Mans for the primary time, a number of assaults flew off the entrance with the likes of Sam Watson (Groupama-FDJ), Healy and Clément Alleno (Burgos-BH) concerned.
EF tried to manage the ultimate 20km however after the bell rang for the ultimate time with three riders nonetheless up the highway, carnage broke out on the ultimate ascent of the Côte de Gazonfier climbs with Alexandre Delettre (St Michel – Mavic – Auber93) and Venturini attempting to assault away from the lads in pink.
Benoît Cosnefroy (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) countered excessive however he was shortly caught as Healy’s took management within the inexperienced, white and gold jersey.
Van den Berg stayed in Healy’s wheel from 4.3km to go till the ultimate 350 metres with a nine-man group set to play out the ultimate. The key for the Dutchman was that fellow quick man Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) and stage 3 winner Alberto Dainese (Tudor) each dropped within the frantic run for house leaving him because the clear quickest.
The 24-year-old continued his nice 2024 season in France after taking his second Worldour win on the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya. His teammate Healy appears to be approaching his prime kind earlier than heading again to the Ardennes Classics within the coming weeks the place he took second at Amstel Gold and fourth at Liège-Bastogne-Lège in 2023.
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