Simon Yates has claimed his first Giro d’Italia title as team-mate Olav Kooij won in the final stage sprint in Rome.
The Visma-Lease a Bike leader claimed the pink jersey in audacious fashion with a daring long-range attack on the gravel Colle Delle Finestre yesterday and only had to make it to the finish line safely on today’s sprint stage.
It was double joy for the Dutch team as a text-book lead out helped propel Kooij to victory on the race’s final day.
On a twisty finale sprinting rivals Sam Bennett and Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) found themselves boxed in and unable to overhaul the Dutchman as he took his second win of the race.
Speaking to TNT Sports after the stage Kooij said: “We couldn’t wish for a better final weekend. Yesterday was really amazing for the team and today I had to give everything that was left in the legs, I just had to push it to the line.
“We had a plan but with sprinting it’s never easy to do it perfectly. Today we really committed to make it a sprint and with Wout [van Aert] we just went all in. I’m happy to make it to the line.”
Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) claimed the sprinters ciclamino jersey, Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana) won the blue mountains jersey and Isaac Del Torro won the white young rider’s jersey. Del Torro’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad also won the team classification.
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(Image credit: Getty Images)
How it happened
The early kilometres of the stage were processional and marked by each of the jersey wearers and their teams taking some time to soak up the moment at the front of the peloton.
Visma-Lease a Bike did much of the work to keep the race together until 75km to go when a break of six riders finally muscled their way off the front. The group of Alessandro Verre (Arkea-B&B Hotels), Enzo Paleni (Groupama-FDJ), Josef Černý (Soudal Quick-Step), Michael Hepburn (Jayco-AlUla), Adrea Pietrobon (Team Polti VisitMalta), Martin Marcellusi (VF Group-Bardiani CSF- Faizanè), forged a gap of just 30 seconds by the 30km to go mark.
The most dramatic moment of the early racing was when Damiano Caruso (Bahrain-Victorious), who sat fifth on GC, suffered a flat and had to chase back to the peloton.
But as the race pressed on the sprinters’ teams, including Visma in celebratory pink accented kit riding for Olav Kooij, began to dedicate more resources to the chase and the gap tumbled down to just 10 seconds as the riders crossed the 15km to go mark.
Paleni, seemingly chasing the most aggressive rider prize for the day, attacked the break as the peloton closed in but Černý worked his way back across to him.
Černý rode away from Paleni on the final lap of the twisty city circuit to become the last rider absorbed by the pack with 6km left to race.
Visma led the peloton into the final kilometre with Kooij in Wout van Aert’s wheel. Pedersen lay in wait behind Kooij keen to spoil the pink jersey team’s day. But as Kooij opened up his sprint Pedersen found himself boxed in.
Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) came home in second with Matteo Moschetti (Q36.5 Pr Cycling Team) in third.
Having trained as a journalist at Cardiff University I spent eight years working as a business journalist covering everything from social care, to construction to the legal profession and riding my bike at the weekends and evenings. When a friend told me Cycling Weekly was looking for a news editor, I didn't give myself much chance of landing the role, but I did and joined the publication in 2016. Since then I've covered Tours de France, World Championships, hour records, spring classics and races in the Middle East. On top of that, since becoming features editor in 2017 I've also been lucky enough to get myself sent to ride my bike for magazine pieces in Portugal and across the UK. They've all been fun but I have an enduring passion for covering the national track championships. It might not be the most glamorous but it's got a real community feeling to it.
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