IAM Cycling's Dries Devenyns broke through the Etixx-Quickstep blockade to snatch the final stage win and overall victory from Gianni Meersman.
"I am very happy with this success," Devenyns said. "The last few weeks have not been easy since I had to abandon the Tour de Suisse and then could not start the Tour de France due to illness. Something else that is satisfying is how this victory came about today. I knew I felt good, and was probably one of the strongest in the field. Add to that the fact that the team performed exactly as we said we would in the team meeting this morning. We were able to be competitive in the final attacks, and made the tempo seriously hard for everyone else. And then I managed to finish off such strong teamwork with a good win."
Although Meersman's teammates patrolled the front of the race to try to protect the race leader from such attacks, Devenyns powered away on the last of 11 climbs, the Côte de Val Fassotte, with 2.2km to go and blew the race to pieces.
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The 33-year-old narrowly avoided being passed at the line by a hard-charging Jelle Vanendert (Lotto Soudal) and Evegeny Shalunov (Gazprom-Rusvelo).
Thanks to his time bonus of 10 seconds and an eight-second gap to Meersman, who was dragged to the line by stage 4 winner Matteo Trentin, Devenyns claimed the overall victory by five seconds on Meersman, with Katusha's Viacheslav Kuznetsov in third.
"The team was very strong today and worked really hard, keeping me sheltered and in a good position, but on the last ascent, Dries Devenyns was just stronger than me and although I did everything in my power, it wasn’t enough to keep the jersey", Meersman said. "I am disappointed now, but I will try to take the positives out of this week and carry my good form into the next race, Vuelta a Burgos."
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