Selig claims Volta Limburg

The young German claimed a comfortable victory in a small group sprint at the end of the 40th edition of the Hell of the Mergelland ahead of Sonny Colbrelli (Bardiani - CSF) and Paul Martens (Blanco)

An 18-man escape group formed on the 196 kilometre route that began in Eijsden, a suburb of Maastricht, but they were caught with 76km remaining as the riders crossed many of the same climbs that feature in the Amstel Gold Race.

Bram Tankink (Blanco), Maurits Lammertink (Vacansoleil-DCM), Marco Canola (Bardiani-CSF), Timofey Kritskiy (Katusha) and Luc Hagenaars (Metec-TKH) then formed a new front group.

And after crossing the last of the 22 hellingen on the testing parcours with 25km remaining, Tankink and Lammertink had gone ahead and led by 25 seconds.

But the lead duo were caught with 8km remaining, mainly due to the hard work of Selig's Katusha team-mates, and the 24-year-old prevailed in the sprint to claim only his second professional victory after his maiden success in the 2011 Binche-Tournai-Binche as a Leopard-Trek stagiaire.

“This is really cool," Seliger said, "My team-mates did a perfect job today, I am so happy I could finish their strong effort. Timofey first went off in the breakaway and everybody gave everything that we could to make it into the decisive group. After the successes in De Panne we are all in a pretty good mood and wanted to continue with a victory here in Limburg like Pavel Brut did for Katusha last year."