Dennis crashes out of the Eneco Tour

A crash inside the final 50km of the Eneco Tour seventh stage saw Australia's Rohan Dennis lose his chance to defend the race lead.

A crash dropped BMC's Rohan Dennis out of the Eneco Tour. Source: Getty

Dennis was in the hot seat all day on a stage that was everything a classic should be, including terrain taken from the Tour of Flanders.

More of a general classification and time trial rider, Dennis came under pressure from Etixx-QuickStep whose riders excel on the cobbles of Belgium.

Dennis started the day with a 16 second lead over teammate Taylor Phinney and 24 seconds over Tony Martin (Etixx-QuickStep).

When the crash occurred Rohan Dennis was in a group of general classification favourites who had just gone off the front of the peloton to chase a nine rider breakaway, which included eventual stage winner Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data) and overall winner, Niki Terpstra (Etixx-QuickStep).

Dennis went down on his right side and was forced to wait for the team car and new bike.

after the bike change, team-mates Joey Rosskopf, Manuel Quinziato, Tom Bohli and Stefan Küng worked hard to try and bring Dennis back to the bunch.

They reached the second group of riders but were well over a minute down on the race leaders. Suffering from the crash, Dennis eventually to abandoned.