Wout Poels sealed the overall of the Tour of Turkey as his teammate Matteo Malucelli won stage 8 to cap off a stellar week for XDS Astana.
It was a fast and hectic sprint on the wide roads of İzmir to bring the stage race to a close, and despite an organised lead-out from Uno-X Mobility, it was a searingly fast Malucelli that crossed the line first, beating Alexander Kristoff into second. Giovanni Lonardi (Polti VisitMalta) took third.
The Italian’s win marked Astana’s fourth win of the week, after dominated proceedings in Turkey, and taking home the overall through Wout Poels, who won stage 4, and they also secured second on GC with Harold López.
Picnic PostNL’s Guillermo Juan Martinez completed the GC podium in third.
“It’s super nice. I knew I was in a good shape, but to win the GC is always special, so I’m super happy,” Poels said after stage 8.
“I think the team did a really good job [to defend the jersey], and also with today winning the stage, so that’s the cherry on the cake. The feeling was really good, a really nice atmosphere, and everyone worked really hard, also the staff around the team, so it’s really nice to finish it off.”
Like the previous days, despite stage 8’s fairly flat profile there was still a motivated breakaway group of initially eight riders that rode hard to try and disrupt the sprinters’ plans.
With 50km to go, stage 2 winner Tibor Del Grosso (Alpecin-Deceuninck) joined the breakaway and looked to add some impetus to the leaders, and they held a gap into the final.
With 15km to go, the break had a 20-second gap, at which point the leading riders started attacking each other in an attempt to stay away, mainly led by Del Grosso and Zeb Kyffin (Unibet Tietema Rockets).
Del Grosso in particular tried to keep things rolling, slowly whittling down the leading group as riders gave in, but ultimately the leaders were swept up by the peloton with 4km to go to set up for the expected sprint.
“I knew before this race that there were not a lot of real opportunities for the sprinters, only three for sure – today, yesterday, and the first day – and also we had the leader’s jersey so I needed to help my teammate during the race,” Malucelli explained at the finish.
“I tried to save a lot of energy during the week, because I knew that after eight days, it’s more important to be fresh in the last kilometres. I did my best. I thought all week about these last two stages. Yesterday I made a big mistake, I tried too far from the finish, but today I did everything perfect and finally I won.”
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