(Sportcom) – Nickolas Zokowsky was feeling up to speed ahead of the fifth and final stage of the Denmark Cycling Tour on Saturday.
The athlete from Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides finished 24th (+35 s) in the 127-kilometre stage presented between Give and Vejle. Zokowsky (Human Powered Health) believes he could have done better had it not been for a coveted canister that was never handed to him before the finale that suited his punching skills well.
“I’m happy with my result, but at the same time it’s a bit disappointing. I had a stroke of fatigue in the last two kilometers. I never had the bottle in question and I lacked energy in the last ascent,” commented the Quebecer who did not throw the stone at anyone and who believes that it is rather a question of a communication error.
“I lost 30 seconds in not even a kilometer. It’s really disappointing because earlier I felt great and I was confident to get a big result to move up even further in the overall standings. It didn’t end exactly the way I wanted it to. […] It seems banal, but in a race of this level, it takes all the energy you need to perform.
Pier-André Côté (Human Powered Health) and Guillaume Boivin (Israel – Premier Tech) respectively finished 60th (+9 min 6 s) and 87th (+14 min 20 s) of the day.
Christophe Laporte (Jumbo-Visma) won the fifth and final stage of the Tour, which also allowed him to finish first in the general classification thanks to a four-second lead over the man who held the leader’s jersey at the start of the day, the American Magnus Sheffield (INEOS Grenadiers).
The latter went all out in the final 500m of the final ascent when he elbowed Denmark’s Soren Kragh Andersen (DSM) to take the final inside corner. The American was then alone in the lead down the stretch, except that the Frenchman remained stuck in his wheel and was patient before starting his sprint.
Zukowsky ends the Tour in 16th place (+1 min 27 s), up three places, while Côté is 45th (+10 min 17 s) and Boivin is 61st (+15 min 34 s).
The best Quebecer in the standings was part of the breakaway that started with a hundred kilometers to go. He was even anecdotally the virtual leader of the Tour for a while, but the Jumbo-Visma and INEOS Grenadiers formations, which had sights in the general classification, limited the gap of the runaways to at most 2 minutes.
“It was super nervous and everyone knew it was going to be a really tough race today with the small roads, the wind and the hills. I took the opportunity (to hang the breakaway). Being in front on a course like today (Sunday), it was not necessarily a bad deal,” concluded Zukowsky who will pin a bib again next Wednesday, in Belgium, at Druivenkoers – Overijse (1.1).
Pier-André Côté and Guillaume Boivin are also on the entry list.