Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) has captured the overall classification of the Tour de Pologne by a single second’s advantage over João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates), while Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) claimed the final stage in Krakow in a bunch sprint.
Tied on time with Almeida after Thursday’s time trial in Katowice but still in yellow, Mohorič inched ahead on the overall on Friday by winning an intermediate sprint with a time bonus midway through the stage.
Neither Mohorič nor Almeida, second in the intermediate sprint, took part in the final dash for the line, with Merlier repeating his stage 1 victory ahead of Arvid de Kleijn (Tudor) and Fernando Gaviria (Movistar).
Defeated by Almeida in the 2021 Tour de Pologne, this time round the Slovenian has clinched the overall victory ahead of his Portuguese rival. Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos Grenadiers) finished third despite a late crash.
“It was really a team effort, I would never have been able to do this without them,” Mohorič said afterwards. “Cvery single teammate contributed a lot and even today the race was decided on that bonus sprint.
“If I had been a single bike length slower, then I would have lost the race, so I can only thank them for this, they’ve been working hard all week and tonight we will celebrate.”
Mohorič also announced that he would donate all his share of the prize money to charities working with the victims of the torrential floods that devastated northern Slovenia on Friday.
How it unfolded
After a start outside Zabrze football stadium the first hour of racing across the plains of southern Poland was run off at such high speed that, as Almeida and UAE had obviously planned, there was no opportunity for a breakaway. Instead, the early part of the race culminated in a drawn-out duel after 67 kilometres between Almeida and Mohorič for the intermediate sprint and bonus seconds in the town of Wilamowice.
Almeida did his utmost to get round a string of two Bahrain Victorious riders and ahead of Mohorič.
However, the UAE leader’s final burst of speed proved insufficient to get past the Slovenian, who took the sprint by nearly a bike length after a long lead-out by Andrea Pasqualon. The battle for the GC was effectively over, 100 kilometres from the official finish in Krakow.
Transition stage business as usual then resumed, with a flurry of attacks instantly following Almeida’s last challenge for GC. Eventually 2023 Brabantse Pijl winner Dorion Godon (AG2R-Citroën), Cristian Scaroni (Astana Qazaqstan) and Marcin Budinski (Poland) managed to edge clear.
The trio worked well ahead, tackling one of the few hilly obstacles of the day, the cat. 3 Witanowice, with around a minute’s advantage. But the sprinters teams were clearly planning to maintain the fast men’s traditional dominance of Pologne’s Krakow finish for at least another year, and their gap did not rise any further.
A last ditch-effort from the three saw them make it to the outskirts of Katowice a handful of seconds ahead, while UAE and Movistar took command of the peloton. Although Budinski and Godon had a few metres gap as they crossed the line on the first of three finishing laps, the Pole and Frenchman were swept up almost immediately afterwards, prior to Soudal-QuickStep laying down an ever more insistent pace at the front of the bunch.
A mid-bunch crash with eight kilometres to go left a dozen riders down, with sprinter Pascal Ackermann (UAE Team Emirates) one notable victim, just as he had been in a late spill in the first day at Poznan. Mohorič was visibly active on the front in the finale as he fought both to stay out of trouble and to ensure Almeida did not make a last-minute attack. But with the sprinters’ teams still in control of the last laps, the GC battle was no longer an issue.
An Alpecin-Deceuninck rider tried hard to surprise the sprinters with a late jump away just before the final corner, and it briefly seemed as if the peloton would not come up to enough speed to bring him back. However, stage winner Merlier and Soudal-Quick Step were determined to bookend their participation in Pologne with a second stage win.
“With 800 metres to go, Bert [Van Lerberghe] started his leadout and that’s really early,” Merlier recounted to Cyclingnews afterwards, “so 600, 500, 400 metres went by and at 300 he was, like, shaking…
“So I saw Gaviria coming up and Bert lost speed, which was normal, because he had gone so early. It was difficult for me to get the 56 gear going today but once I did I could get Gaviria back, and in the end, for me, it was a good sprint.”
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