Marc de Maar wins Stage 5 of Tour de Beauce

The Curacao road champion Marc de Maar (UnitedHealthcare) crossed the finished line on the Grande Allée ahead of Antoine Duchesne (Bontrager Cycling Team) and Oscar Clark (Hincapie Sportswear Development Cycling Team) on Saturday, taking the fifth stage of the Tour de Beauce. The trio were apart of a decisive breakaway that made it successfully to the finish line.

De Maar won stages 3 and 5 in the 2010 edition of the Tour de Beauce.

Francisco Mancebo (5 Hour Energy) retained his lead in the overall classification heading into the stage 6 finale held in Ville de St-Georges on Sunday.

Stage 5 took the peloton on a 126-km circuit race through downtown Quebec City. The men took on 12 laps of a 10.5-km circuit. The race started on Grande Allee, descended through the Parc des Champs-de-Battaille, rode along the St Lawrence River on the Boulevard Champlain. It took a turn up the steep Cote de la Montagne, which passed the well known Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac before finishing back on Grande Allee.

The stage included three king of the mountain ascents on the Cote de la Montagne and two intermediate sprints at the start-finish line.

A breakaway of five riders set off during the opening laps that included De Maar and Clark along with Guillaume Boivin (Team Canada), Craig Lewis (Champion System) and James Driscoll (Jamis-Hagens Berman). The gap grew to more than three minutes by the start of the fourth lap.

Mancebo’s 5 Hour Energy teammates controlled the front of the main field to manage the gap to the breakaway riders. A small chase group formed and successfully bridged the gap. Those riders were Duchesne, and Team Canada riders Christian Meier, Marsh Cooper and Rob Britton.

The gap to the breakaway started to fall during the final laps of the race. Boivin fell off pace with two laps to go and the gap dropped to under a minute. The riders left in the break were De Maar, Meier, Duchesne, Lewis, Clark and Driscoll.

Meier did a lot of the pace setting over the last climb and up the long drag along the Grande Allee. Separations began to form between the six breakaway riders as they approached the finish line, with De Maar taking the win out of a sprint between Duchesne and Clark.

More to come.

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