Soudal Quick-Step has two riders on in the top three ahead of the weekend.
In just his second individual time trial of the season, a flat 15.9km one held around Saint-Quentin, Kasper Asgreen powered to third place, a result that elevated him sixteen places in the general classification of the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque. The multiple Danish Champion of the discipline, Kasper clocked a time of 19:35 – just 14 seconds behind stage winner Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis) – and lies now in second place with three stages to go.
“I felt that I did a good time trial, unfortunately not fast enough, on a nice course. I was expecting it to be a bit faster; I don’t know if it was the wind or the asphalt was a bit rougher than I thought, but you really had to fight out there. We can be content with how things went and we’ll continue fighting for a stage win here”, said Kasper.
It was a good day also for another Soudal Quick-Step rider, Ethan Vernon. The Brit finished fourth in Saint-Quentin and moved to the top of the youth standings, while cementing his place on the overall podium of the competition, just six seconds behind his teammate.
“Taking the white jersey is nice. Now that the time trial is out of the way, we have several cards to play in the next days. The most important stage should be the one of Saturday, most likely the GC will be set in stone then, and we’ll try to go for a good result”, an optimistic Ethan explained.
Photo credit: ©Luc Claessen / Getty Images
