Luka Pibernik (Lampre-Merida) took a surprised victory at the Eneco Tour on Saturday, winning the sprint from a five-man breakaway that barely made it to the finish line ahead of the peloton.
The 22-year-old Slovenian rider produced a long sprint effort to beat Briton’s Mark McNally (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) and Bert Van Lerberghe (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise), while Alexis Gougeard (AG2R La Mondiale) was fourth and the USA's Chad Haga (Giant-Alpecin) finished just behind in fifth, after also being in the move of the day and leading out the sprint.
Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo) took the bunch sprint for sixth place beating Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis), Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data) and Arnaud Demare (FDJ).
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Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) was only 45th on the day and failed to take back any time on race leader Rohan Dennis (BMC) despite his Tinkoff doing a lot of work in the finale to help chase the break. The world champion now only has Sunday’s final stage in the Flemish hills to pull back 27 seconds on Dennis.
Taylor Phinney remains second overall at 16 seconds back on his BMC teammate, while Tony Martin (Etixx-QuickStep) remains a threat at 24 seconds.
Luka Pibernik was overjoyed but also stunned to have won the stage.
"I didn’t expect this at the start this morning but once in the break, I just rode as fast as I could to the finish line. I’ve not had a lot of time to think about it all but its been an incredible day," he said.
"We saw that we could make it to the finish line, so I tried to save as much energy as possible. I think Gougeard was the strongest guy in the breakaway and so I decided to go on his wheel. Then in the last 200 metres, I tried and I made it."
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