It is not unusual for the general classification to be very close as the peloton heads into the final evening of a Six Days race. This, however, is not the case in this year’s edition of the Berlin Six Days. In the German capital, Belgian duo Kenny de Ketele and Moreno de Pauw swept everything and everyone before them on the penultimate evening to take a two-lap lead into the final and decisive night.

As the events unfolded on Monday evening, the action seemed to follow a well-established pattern at the race. The Belgians and Havik/Stöpler and Kluge/Kalz shared the points in the early sprints fairly evenly and neither team made any effort to win the team elimination, preferring to save their energy for the two Madisons of the evening. The last of these proved to be relatively uneventful, though, with Kluge/Kalz claiming the win but not being able to gain a lap on anyone except their hapless fellow Germans, Barth and Burkart.

Before that final Madison, though, there was the big KIA-Madison which might turn out to be decisive in determining the outcome of the race. De Ketele and de Pauw brushed aside all competition, won the event and distanced their main rivals by two laps in a powerful display of strength and strategic nous. Kluge and Kalz will have to regain those two laps before the race concludes later this evening which seems to be somewhat unlikely. The Belgians thus seem poised to repeat their victory from the London Six Days last autumn.

General classification after day 5:

1 Kenny de Ketele - Moreno de Pauw (Belgium) 209

At 2 laps

2 Marcel Kalz - Roger Kluge (Germany) 215

At 3 laps

3 Nick Stöpler - Yoeri Havik (Holland) 192

4 Nico Heßlich - Christian Grasmann (Germany) 156

At 4 laps

5 Germain Burton - Mark Stewart (Great Britain) 167

6 Morgan Kneisky (France) - David Muntaner (Spain) 153

At 6 laps

7 Alex Rasmussen - Jesper Mørkøv (Denmark) 116

At 9 laps

8 Daniel Holloway (USA) - Melvin van Zijl (Holland) 86

At 10 laps

9 Nils Politt - Tino Thömel (Germany) 101

10 Roy Pieters (Holland) - Andreas Graf (Austria) 60

11 Mathias Krigbaum - Marc Hester (Denmark) 57

At 14 laps

12 Lucas Liß (Germany) - Andreas Müller (Austria) 68

At 21 laps

13 Hans Pirius - Sebastian Wotschke (Germany) 82

At 23 laps

14 Jan Kraus - Martin Blaha (Czech Republic) 21

At 24 laps

15 Wojtek Pszczolarski - Adrian Tekliński (Poland) 51

At 36 laps

16 Marcel Barth - Achim Burkart (Germany) 12