Gianni Meersman has won the Tour de Wallonie in Belgium.
A fifth and final stage over a hilly 186kms from Malmedy to Ans featured nine climbs and three sprints for the field led by Gianni Meersman of Omega Pharma Quick Step, who had a twenty second lead over Juan Jose Lobato
The first climb was on the Category three Côte d'Ovifat and that gave Kevin Van Melsen of the Wanty Group enough points to take over the lead in the King Of The Mountains competition.
Van Melsen was in a group of seven riders which included Hugo Houle (Ag2r-La Mondiale), Vegard Stake Laengen (Bretagne-Séché Environnement), Julien Fouchard (Cofidis), Gijs Van Hoecke (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Maxime Anciaux (Wallonie-Bruxelles) and Antoine Duchesne (Team Europcar), who were 2.45 ahead by the time that Van Melsen took the second climb of the day at Côte de Bilstain.
Van Melsen added the third, fourth and fifth climbs to his tally as Omega Pharma Quick Step and Trek Factory racing brought the gap down to 1.46.
More work saw that gap drop and with 42kms left, it was down to twenty five seconds and two kilometres later, the escapers were hanging on as Gijs Van Hoecke (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise) took the third sprint at Sprimont.
Only Laengen (Bretagne-Séché Environnement), Kevin Van Melsen (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Maxime Anciaux (Wallonie-Bruxelles), Antoine Duchesne (Team Europcar) were left on the front as the race started on the course used for the Liege-Bastogne-Liege classic race.
On the côte du Hornay, Manuele Boaro (Tinkoff Saxo) and Boris Dron (Wallonie-Bruxelles) and were chased by Cammaerts, Laengen and Habeaux with thirty kilometres left.
Boaro went off on his own as the peloton split with the race leader in the second group but was caught and Tim Wellens took over, taking a twenty five second lead as he rode past Standard Liege’s football ground.
With five kilometres to go, Gianni Meersman moved to the front of the peloton as Wellens was caught and over taken by Silvan Diller of BMC.
He was caught within half a kilometre and Omega Pharma Quick Step took control with Zdenek Stybar leading the way to set up Gianni Meersman to win the stage and take the race overall.