LottoNL-Jumbo Dylan Groenewegen sprinted to win the 100th edition of Rund um Köln today in Germany. After 205.8 kilometres, he topped Germans André Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) and Nikias Arndt (Giant-Alpecin).

After the peloton caught the early break, American Taylor Phinney tried to escape in the final. LottoNL-Jumbo and Lotto-Soudal worked for a bunch sprint, and Groenewegen was put perfect in position by his team-mates and won by a bike length.

"It was a great day for me, and for the team,” Groenewegen said. "Such sprints give you a lot of confidence, we worked hard on the lead-out train. At six kilometres to go, we began the lead-out and in the last hundred metres, I went all out. I was put into place perfectly. The sprint was actually perfect, this is something that we worked on all year, to deliver these sprints. We have great photo now, with me next to Greipel on the podium."

According to plan

“Like last week in Belgium, this was one of those days were everything went according to plan,” said Sports Director Nico Verhoeven. "In the last metres, the team put Dylan perfect in position so could begin his sprint ideally. Then beating Greipel, that’s absolutely beautiful.”

Control

Early in the race, a break-away went with not one LottoNL-Jumbo rider involved. That was according to plan. "As soon as you send a rider to join, the other teams will do the same and you get a very different situation,” Verhoeven added. “When the group was away, we knew it was going to be a controlled race."

The difference to the leaders never went more than four minutes. "We did not lead the chase always, but we had a rider in front of the peloton at all times."