Roy Jans of Wanty Group, has won the second stage of the Etoile de Bessèges race in France.
Stage two was a 155km stage from Nimes to Les Fumades and saw Thomas Vaubourzeix, Evaldas Siskevicius and Tim Kerkhof take a lead of 3:30 before being caught with twenty kilometres gone.
Strong headwinds with minus zero temperatures kept the attacks to a minimum until Kerkhof went out on his his own and built up a five minute lead going into the final one hundred kilometres.
With speeds of only 28kmh from the peloton who stopped four times to complain about the cold, Kerkoff's lead was down to 4.40 with 82 kilometres left.
Twenty kilometres later and Kerkoff's lead was down to 2.46 and then down to 1.20 with 44kms to go.
Tommy Voeckler (Europcar) and Canadian Hugo Houle (AG2R-La Mondiale), went after Kerkoff and caught him after Kerkoff had taken the KOM points.
There was around thirty kilometres left when Kerkoff decided to return to the peloton, leaving Voeckler and Houle to get on it.
They had a lead of forty seconds going into the final twenty kilometres and were caught ten kilometres later.
On to the final 7.7 closing lap and Lotto Soudal were on the front of the peloton trying to keep Kris Boeckmans in the leader's jersey.
Into the final kilometre and the sprint was on. There was a crash which took down the race leader and Bryan Coquard of Team Europcar, Roy Jans of Wanty Group avoided it and took the stage win ahead of Alexandre Blain of Team Marseille, Bob Jungels of Trek Factory, Marco Coledan of Trek Factory Racing and Yannick Martinez of Europcar, followed by Chevalier, Demoitiè, Planckaert, Theuns and Silvestre.
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