4 Jours de Dunkerque: Laurence Pithie secures overall as teammate Jordi Meeus sprints to victory on stage 5

On a hot day in France, 104 riders lined up in Saint-Omer for the traditional final stage of the 4 Jours de Dunkerque, a 181.3km Stage 5 heading north toward the finishing circuits in Dunkerque.

Three riders – Louis Chaleil (Decathlon CMA CGM), Similien Hamon (CIC Pro Cycling Academy and Théo Delacroix (St Michel-Preference Home -Auber93) – formed the breakaway, which was kept on a relatively tight leash.

The gap hovered around the one-minute mark as Hamon led the trio across the line for the first of the eight 8.5km circuits, raced clockwise.

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The situation remained the same for the next three laps as Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe for race leader Laurence Pithie, and the sprinters’ teams such as Tudor for Arvid de Kleijn and EF Education-EasyPost, stayed at the front of the peloton, working for the expected bunch sprint.

With five laps to go, Daniel Årnes (Van Rysel-Roubaix) went on a solo flyer, but his move was always doomed, as the peloton reeled him back.

Meanwhile, the peloton continued to slowly eat away at the gap, from 37 seconds with 24km to go to 17 seconds at the start of the penultimate lap. Hamon was the first to fall off the pace as the last two break riders still had a few seconds as they started the final lap, but the peloton was back together with 4 kilometres to go.

Teams tried to organise at the front, with Red Bull and Tudor on the left, NSN on the right, all jostling for position as the speed cranked up another level.

Unibet Rose Rockets took the front, stringing out the peloton under the red kite, where soon after, a chasing Pithie was caught behind a crash on a tricky corner. At the front, Red Bull’s Danny van Poppel took over to lead out Jordi Meeus to victory. Van Poppel held on to second, and Gianluca Pollefliet (Decathlon CMA CGM) took third in Dunkerque.