The Dutch national champion captures the victory in the race on Team MILRAM’s “home stretch” in Bochum

Dortmund, 8 August 2010. MILRAM’s Niki Terpstra has won the 13th edition of the Sparkassen Giro (UCI-Kategorie 1.1). Having attacked numerous times before in the race, the Dutch national champion finally was able to launch into a successul solo ride from the leading group of seven riders, giving cause to great cheers from Team MILRAM. The team is based in Dortmund, which is near Bochum. After 180 kilometers through the city, Guillaume Boivin (Spidertech-Planet Energy) came in second, while Andre Greipel (HTC-Columbia) was third.

“That was a great performance by our team,” stated a happy Jochen Hahn, directeur sportif for Team MILRAM. “We wanted to make the race hard from the very beginning, since we had no classic sprinter with us, and also had great respect for the fast riders in the field, like Andre Greipel. Our two stagiaires Stefan Schäfer and Michael Weicht were very good today and were a great support for the team. And then Niki Terpstra was our man for the finale, he attacked at the right moment and crowned our team’s work with a victory. Everything went exactly as we had planned.”

It was MILRAM’s Luke Roberts, who had already won the Derny race the night before, who launched the first attack of the day, together with HTC-Columbia rider Tony Martin. But the pack didn’t let the two Tour de France-participants stay in front for long and soon caught them. In the end, it wasn’t until kilometer 120 that the 40 man escape group including MILRAM pro Niki Terpstra and MILRAM stagiaire Stefan Schäfer formed.

With an attack about 20 kilometers before the finish line the Dutch national champion in the MILRAM colors Niki Terpstra started the finale. Eight other riders were able to follow Terpstra, and they all went into the final lap as the lead group. But Niki Terpstra wouldn’t let the escapees come to rest, attacking again and again. On the last climb, he finally got away from the others and went on to capture the victory in a solo ride