Andrei Greipel made it two out of two when he won the Tour Of Belgium Second Stage this afternoon.
Stage two of this five stage race, was from Knokke-Heist , which staged the opening stage finish to Ninove and with 143kms to go, the first attack of the day was started by Arman Kamyshev (ASTANA PRO TEAM) Mikhail Ignatiev (KATUSHA TEAM) Stijn Steels (CRELAND - EUPHONY), Alexandre Pichot (TEAM EUROPCAR) and Sébastien Turgot (TEAM EUROPCAR).
After Romain Lemarchand (Cofidis) and Niko Eeckhout had abandoned, their lead went out to five minutes with Ignatiev taking the first sprint.
Lotto Belisol, working for race leader Andrei Greipel worked hard on the front of the peloton and their lead was down to 3.31 with 60kms to go.
Kamyshev was first past the Primus Checkpoint which carries prize money with 41kms remaining.
Looking to get a win for Andy Fenn, Omega Pharma Quick Step started to drill the peloton along and the gap dropped again to 1.36. This caused a split which left the race leader in the chasing group.
With 26kms left, the leading group of five dropped to three and Steels, Turgot and Ignatiev battled on as the pace of the peloton increased yet again.
As the riders started on the Bosberg climb, Nicky Terpstra and Tom Boonen led the front group, who were now only 21 seconds behind Mikhail Ignatiev, who had gone away on his own.
Ignatiev took the ten points on offer ahead of Boonen and Terpstra before Tony Martin took over at the front of a chasing group which now included BMC's Van Avermaet and Gilbert on wet roads.
With the Katusha rider caught, Gilbert, Terpstra and Gavazzi took over.
They had led for over ten kilometres but were caught inside the final kilometre and this led to a three rider sprint which was won by Andrei Greipel in a time of 4.11.29 beating Danny Van Poppel and Tom Boonen.
The third stage is a 15km individual time trial in Beveren.