First Endurance Russian Champion Sergey Ivanov (Astana) took the overall victory in the Tour de Wallonie (Belgium).   The Tour de Wallonie is the seventh overall stage race victory for Astana (so far) in 2008.

Sergey Ivanov finished third in the last stage behind Patrice Halgand (Crédit Agricole) and Rik Verbrugghe (Cofidis). The three riders escaped earlier in the stage with three other riders: Christophe Edaleine (Ag2R), Scott Nydam (BMC) and Sébastien Minard (Cofidis).   Ivanov, the highest ranked GC rider in the front, was only 33 seconds behind yellow jersey Greg Van Avermaet.

“Initially, the other five riders in the leading group didn’t want to go further with me, as I was dangerous for the GC”, said Sergey Ivanov. “They feared that the peloton would not let us go. I convinced them to try it. The overall victory would be for me, the stage victory for one of the others. We could take advantage as well of the rivalry in the peloton between the teams of Paolo Bettini (Quick-Step) and yellow jersey Greg Van Avermaet (Silence-Lotto). They didn’t want to work for each other.”

For Sergey Ivanov (33), it is his second victory of the year. This season he won, for the fifth time, the Russian Championship and finished 7th in the Amstel Gold Race, 3rd in the Tour of Belgium and 11th in the Tour of Switzerland.

“Since the end of May I am really good. I worked hard to obtain these results. The results came just in time. I am negotiating a contract for 2009.   Victories are the best things to convince people.”

Sergey Ivanov’s next race will be the Clasica San Sebastián (August, 2nd).

Result Stage 5: Welkenraedt-Aubel, 175 K

1 Patrice Halgand; 2 Rik Verbrugghe; 3 Sergey Ivanov (AST) 0.06; 4 Paolo Bettini 0.55; 5 Iljo Keisse; 6 Allan Davis; 7 Tomas Vaitkus (AST); 8 Renaud Dion; 9 Alexandr Kolobnev; 10 Nick Nuyens

Overall Classification:

1 Sergey Ivanov (AST); 2 Greg Van Avermaet 0.19; 3 Paolo Bettini 0.23; 4 Marco Marcato 0.39; 5 Jussi Veikkanen; 6 Alexandr Kolobnev 0.41; 7 Nicolas 0.42; 8 Serge Pauwels 0.43; 9 Jurgen Van Goolen; 10 Anders Lund 0.45; 15 Sergey Yakovlev (AST) 0.45; 21 Tomas Vaitkus (AST) 1.26; 25 Maxim Iglinskiy (AST) 3.10; 36 Dmitriy Muravyev (AST) 8.50; 37 Sérgio Paulinho (AST) 8.52; 63 Gregory Rast (AST) 24.24