In het Oost-Vlaamse Zottegem-Strijpen behaalde de Australiër Mitch Wright zijn tweede zege op Vlaamse bodem. Mitch doet zijn verhaal van de wedstrijd:
After coming off a few great races in Herzele, Opwijk and Parike I new I'd be a marked man and that it would be difficult to get in a break for this reason.
The race started with a neutral section (not that you would know, the pace was so high) of 95 boys and when the neutral zone was finished the race was on. The course was quite technical with many fast corners and sweeping bends. There were a few hills near the middle of the course that also split the bunch up and was an area for attacks to go.
The first lap I was just finding my feet around the course and when the second of eight laps came I decided to jump twice to look for the reaction of the bunch. Both times the bunch was hot on my heels and it wasn't until we hit a nice, strong headwind on the third lap that I got a gap, put my head down and got into a tempo for the long road ahead- still with just under 40km to go.
Two boys from different Belgian teams bridged to me and from the get go I could tell they wanted to stay away just as much as I did.
With three and a half laps to go one of the boys in the group popped and dropped off of myself and Kenneth (one of the Belgian riders) and straight away we looked at each other and we're both determined to power on. After this we got a time gap of a minute with three laps to go. Kenneth and I kept working really well together and after that the time just kept going up and up.
On the last climb of the last lap I decided to attack once again and it worked, I got a gap and was solo in which I came across the line 13seconds in front of Kenneth and 1 minute and 55 seconds in front of the peloton. I was extremely happy with how I rode the race yesterday and to top it off with a win was unreal.
