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 Tejada.
Picnic PostNL’s Guillermo Juan Martinez completed the GC podium in third.
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, 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.
Results
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