Robbie McEwen claimed his first victory of the season by beating Alexander Kristoff and Yauheni Hutarovich in a bunch sprint in the fourth stage of the Tour de Wallonie.

Robbie McEwen claimed his first victory of the season by beating Alexander Kristoff and Yauheni Hutarovich in a bunch sprint in the fourth stage of the Tour de Wallonie.

“The guys did a really good job staying in the front and keeping myself and Manuel Cardoso out of the wind and up where we needed to be,” said the 39 year old Radioshack rider after the finish in Mouscron. “Towards the end and in the final, Bjørn Selander did a good job for me, keeping me in position and out of the wind and following my instructions right until the last 1.5 kilometres where I took Bennati’s wheel on the lead out of Leopard-Trek.

"I was originally going to pull the sprint for Cardoso since the team worked for me yesterday and it didn’t work out. But I was in the perfect position and Manuel lost some positions at the crucial moment, so we had to cut to plan B. That plan was pretty good.”

“I see a very motivated Team RadioShack in this race. There is no pressure but they all want to show something," said Team director Viatcheslav Ekimov. "The team has to leave behind the bad luck we had in the Tour de France. Earlier this week Ben Hermans was already close to a stage victory too. This is nice.”

McEwen is a three time winner of the Tour de France green jersey sprinter’s classification. He has claimed twelve Tour the France stage wins and another twelve in the Giro d'Italia. He is also a five time winner of Paris-Brussels. This season he hopes to win the rainbow jersey for Australia at the World Championships in Copenhagen in September

“I didn’t see much of the Tour de France as I was concentrated on my own training,” said McEwen. “I just trained at home easy for a week, then I went to the South of France and trained a lot in the hills. Just four hours a day, medium tempo, just building up my condition. A week before this race, back in Belgium I trained in the hills of the Flemish Ardennes and planned to used this Tour de Wallonie to get some rhythm back again. Apparently I found my rhythm quite quickly.

"This is promising for the next couple of months and I am still very ambitious," said McEwen. "Since the beginning of the season the World Championships in Copenhagen is a big objective. I think I can do a big preparation by doing this race and races like Eneco Tour, Hamburg, Plouay and Fourmies.

"I just need to be selected now. Hopefully that will be the case."