The winner this year is the Dane Niklas Eg

Terezín – Finished! this year 41st edition of the Junior Peace Race is over and the Danish team fulfilled the expectations of being the favorites. Indeed, in the final summary of the times it is two Danish who are the fastest overall, the yellow jersey now belongs to Niklas Eg forever.

            The final stage, which traditionally starts in Terezín, could still change a lot. The riders were well aware of that and they went under way of the last stage in a "grand style". Attacks were launched one after another but the climbs were not as hard as on Saturday so the peloton stayed mostly in one piece. No one wanted to loose a single second. „The Saturdays queen stage was the hardest, it was there where the main gains and losses happened, now the task was to defend the lead. We had a strong team, sometimes we were a bit unlucky but we were certain we could defend the yellow jersey“ as the overall winner said also mentioning some of the unlucky moments of the Danish team.

            The Danes were in control of the may stages, they had an answer for all the attacks and thanks to the well balanced team they left no room for surprises. At the same time they managed to get in some of the escapes themselves. A promising escape of Frederik Plesner was interrupted by a nasty crash in Býčkovice, where he crashed in to a building. Almost instantaneously he was able to get back on his bike, but he was caught up by the peloton few kilometers before the finish line. Then it was clear that the battle for the stage victory will end in a group sprint. There was a crash in the main group in the last turn in Terezin, but the French Kowalski was not involved and he won the last stage, his second this year. He succeeded the first and the last stage this year. The overall classification was not changed and the gold belongs to the seventeen years old Niklas Eg and silver to his team mate Soren Andersen. Third place belongs to the Russian Arslanov. „The Peace Race is rally great event, the victory here has a high value. I hope this victory could be a start of my carrier“ concluded the victorious Dane Niklas Eg.

Results – stage 4: 1. Dylan Kowalski (France) 2:24:33, 2. Davide Ballerini (Italy), 3. Christopher Lawless (GB), 4. Soren Andersen (Denmark), 5. Felix Drumm (Germany), 14. Šimon Matějů (CZ) – all in the same time.

Overall: 1. Niklas Eg 9:26:32, 2. Soren Andersen (both Denmark) +0:10, 3. Idar Arslanov (Russia) +0:39, 4. Mads Pedersen (Denmark) +0:43, 5. Geoffrey Curran (USA) +0:45, 25. Michael Vakoč (CZ) +5:58.