Tom Boonen Wins Tour Of Qatar Second Stage

Last updated : 10 February 2014 By Covsupport News Service

Tom Boonen of the Omega Pharma Quick Step team won the second stage of the Tour Of Qatar.

Omega Pharma Quick Step's Nicky Terpstra was in the leader's jersey going into the longest stage of the race at 160.5kms from Camel Race Track to Al Khor Corniche.

The stage was littered with a number of crashes before Nikolas Maes took the first intermediate sprint of the day ahead of team mate Terpstra with 83kms gone.

Another crash saw the peloton split into three groups and saw the entire Omega Pharma team of eight riders all in the first group that also featured British riders Andy Fenn and Team Sky's Luke Rowe and Ian Stannard, which was 35 seconds ahead.

Lotto's Jurgen Roelandts took the second sprint at Umm Thenaithain Farm ahead of Tom Boonen and Terpstra as the front group's lead extended to 31 seconds on the second group and 2.31 on the third group on the road. 

The gap was still around thirty seconds as the front group entered the final ten kilometres of the stage. Kruopis suffered a mechanical so Lars Boom and Belkin's Robert Wagner attacked.

They were caught inside the final kilometre and Tom Boonen seized the opportunity and took the victory ahead of Michael Morkov, Jurgen Roelants, Andy Fenn, Matti Breschel, Ian Stannard, Nicky Terpstra, Marcel Sieberg, Lars Booms and Karsten Kroon of Tinkoff-Saxo came in five seconds later to take ninth and tenth places. 

Nicky Terpstra keeps the leaders jersey ahead of Roelandts and Boonen.