24 juni 2012
2012 Dutch Road Race Championships
The Dutch road race championships took place on Sunday, June
24th and was marked by bad weather and several crashes resulting in
a decimated peloton with most of the field abandoning the race.
Four riders broke away early on in the race, Koen's teammate Albert
Timmer, Johnny Hoogerland (Vacansoleil), Stef Clement (Rabobank)
and Sven van Luijk (Cyclingteam Jo Piels). With an advantage of
2:30 with twelve laps to go, Hoogerland increased the pace and
Timmer was the only one who could follow. Together the two led the
race for another four laps, until Luc Hagenaars (Metec Cyclingteam)
bridged up. Shortly thereafter, the three were caught by the
peloton and Wilco Kelderman (Rabobank) tried his luck. Alittle bit
later Koen's teammate Ronan van Zandbeek and Bert-Jan Lindeman
(VCS) bridged up. WIth six laps to go, Rabobank's Robert Gesink
launched a counter attack with Vacansoleil's Wout Poels. The two
bridged up to the leading group with Niki Terpstra (Quickstep-Omega
Pharma) and Lars Boom (Rabobank) joining them a little later.
Boom and Terpstra attacked the group. The two stayed away for a
lap until a group of eight riders, including Koen, bridged up. With
a little more than four laps to go, Lindeman and Terpstra attacked
from the group. Terpstra quickly left Lindeman behind and went off
alone. Lindeman was duly caught by the chasing group of Gesink,
Mollema, Boom, Michel Kreder (Garmin-Baracuda), Sebastian Langeveld
(Orica-Greenedge) and Koen.
With three laps to go Terpstra had built up his advantage to
almost a minute. Unfortunately Koen, together with Mollema, dropped
out of the chasing group. A lap later Terpstra had built up his
advantage further to a minute and a half. In the closing lap, Boom
and Lindeman counter attacked, but they could not come close to
Terpstra who crossed the line solo. Boom finished ahead of Lindeman
in 2nd.
Koen said afterwards that due to the cold and the many corners on
the course, he had not had enough time to eat. "I had more to offer
only that it was not the weather that I and a lot of the others had
hoped for." While Mollema dropped out of the race, Koen continued
on in a small group containing amongst others his teammate Dumoulin
and Rabobank's Tjallingii. Koen finished the race in 10th place,
8'47" down on Terpstra.
Photo: Koen in the shrunken peloton (with thanks to Guido van der
Klauw)
Photo: Koen leading the chasers behind Terpstra (with thanks to
Guido van der Klauw)
