Pfeiffer Georgi pushes to strong third place at Dwars door het Hageland

After the dominant performance at Dwars door de Westhoek, Team DSM continued to impress at today’s edition of Dwars door het Hageland. After an attacking race, last weekend’s winner Pfeiffer Georgi proved her great shape and brought home a strong 3rd place for the team.

The race was shaped by attacks, crashes and splits in the peloton from the beginning on and new situations were created constantly, with Team DSM always being present in the important moves. Into the final 25 kilometres, another big group of 26 riders got away from the peloton, with Pfeiffer Georgi and Franziska Koch representing the team’s colours. The group rode well together until the final five kilometres, where the winning move of four riders attacked. Pfeiffer made the jump for the team and fought her way to the line on the punchy final kilometres, finishing on the podium for the team. Another great ride from the team, showing their strength on the challenging roads of Belgium.

After the race Pfeiffer Georgi said: “Today was a really hard race. We had a bit of bad luck in the beginning with a few crashes for a lot of us. We then tried to fight back into the race with the race being hard and hot. We then had Franzi and me in the final where she was using the gravel sections and I was using the climbs to attack. In the end, a third place out of all the bad luck we had today is not too bad. Obviously, we came to win today, but with the circumstances, we did well as a team.”

Team DSM coach Kelvin Dekker added: “We knew upfront that it would be a hectic race today. Unfortunately, Charlotte and Franziska crashed quite early, which took Charlotte out of the race, while Franziska had to chase for quite a long time. We saw more crashes during the day with Pfeiffer and again Franziska being involved for us, so a lot of bad luck for us in the first part. We said we would start racing after the first passage of the finish line and Franziska and Pfeiffer covered a lot of attacks for us and great support from their teammates, which was really nice to see. In the end, it came down to a group of around 20 riders with both, Pfeiffer and Franziska in. Pfeiffer did a really good final and a few attacks but didn’t get a gap, so we knew it would be hard on the final climb. So we gambled a bit there and got a nice podium in the end.”