Welcome for the final of the Tour of Britain, and what a close call it is! Izagirre currently trails a strong Paillot by a mere two seconds, Schreurs is third at 37”, but Dunbar and Gallopin are also at less than a minute. The pure puncheurs will be hoping to gain some time on those allrounders and catch them, but the stage doesn’t look that hard at first sight, so there’s a decent chance most of them will hold on ‘easily’. There are of course seconds to be won at the finish as well. Let’s see who wins the last stage and the GC in the Tour of Britain!
Three KoM’s today, and Vichot wants to win that classification and attacks right after the finish! KoM-leader Barbero tries to follow him but is unable to do so!
Vuillermoz and Le Gac attack in the peloton and bring the KoM-leader with them as they reach Vichot with 1.5 km to climb to the first KoM. Behind them, Molard, Zordan and Van Keirsbulck also try to join the break of the day.
But Vichot accelerates again and wins the KoM-sprint, while Barbero crosses the top in fourth. The Spaniard still leads the ranking with 56 points, while the Frenchman has 54 points and Van Keirsbulck now 50.
A few moments later four more riders make it a break of eleven: Siskevicius, Vila, Phodingam and Malacarne.
The leaders reach the first intermediate sprint with 120 km to the finish line. Le Gac, Barbero and Molard not taking any turns up front.
The peloton is 3’30” behind. The teams doing the work are GCN, Campari and Duolingo.
The leaders have reached Kenton Hill (1st category), penultimate KoM of the Tour of Britain! Vichot attacks with 1.5 km to climb, Van Keirsbulck is right behind him!
The Belgian crosses the top before the others, while Molard beats Vichot to second and Barbero is sixth! In the KoM-classification, this means that Van Keirsbulck leads by two points over Vichot and six over Barbero, while Molard is fourth at sixteen points. The last KoM is of second category, so a maximum of ten points can be gathered. 72 km to the finish line as the peloton is 3’10” behind. Polar also helping in the chase.
1 km to climb on the last climb of the day! Van Keirsbulck leads the way, rivals Vichot and Barbero are in fifth and sixth!
Vichot next to Van Keirsbulck with 400 meters to climb, Molard and Le Gac can really help their fellow countryman here!
But they don’t! Vichot in third, Barbero in fourth and Van Keirsbulck in fifth, this means … Vichot overtakes the Belgian and wins the KoM-classification! The peloton crosses the top 2’50” later, as there are 45 km to go!
Yellow jersey Paillot has been at the front all day, but has now lost some places on that KoM. Is he able to survive for 44 km more?
Zordan is dropped in the leading group a bit later. 30 km left, as a peloton of 120 riders is 1’50” behind the ten leaders.
The Polar riders have seen the yellow jersey struggling a bit, which is the sign to step on the gas pedal! 25 km to go as the Finnish team uppens the pace, which sees Paillot drop back to +- 75th place in the peloton!
The remaining 23.5 km.
A breakaway win seems back on the tables, as the leading group has 2’30” over the peloton under the flag of the final 20 km!
16 km to go for the ten leaders, as they are at the top of the short but steep hill, with an average of 12%. What will happen in the peloton?
Nothing much, yellow jersey Paillot gaining places again! All of a sudden it’s looking very bright for Farfetch!
He hasn’t joined the KoM-sprints today, but now is his time to shine! Youngster Phodingam attacks on the penultimate hill of the day, the reaction comes from Le Gac, Siskevicius and Vuillermoz!
The Nordstrom rider has 30” over the three chasers, with the peloton at 3’15”!
7 km left as the three chasers are now twenty seconds behind Phodingam! Malacarne at one minute, and the other breakaway rider and a peloton of 82 riders at 3’10”! Yellow jersey Paillot is coming very close to winning the Tour of Britain now!
And the leaders gets caught! Four leaders with 4.5 km to go, Malacarne at 45”!
The four leaders reach the final hill with 3 km to go, Malacarne is 30” behind and probably won’t catch them anymore! The final hills gets steeper by the meter!
The four leaders now with 2 km to go, while Malacarne is only ten seconds behind! Between them and the peloton at 2’30” we can still see Vichot. Have a look at this though, as yellow jersey Paillot has lost a lot of places just before the final climb! He’s at the back of the peloton now, this is a very tricky situation!
1.5 km to go! The peloton now in full on sprint mode and coming closer quickly, 1’35” behind the four leaders! Yellow jersey Paillot back in the middle of the peloton, he’s really making this a very thrilling finale!
Ooh, the peloton really going hard now, as they have almost caught the breakaway riders under the flamme rouge! Yellow jersey Paillot holding on quite well so far, but of course Izagirre can’t finish in the top-3, or else he’ll overtake the jersey! The Spaniard at the head of the peloton at the moment!
Siskevicius starts his sprint with 700 meters to climb, does he still have enough in the tank to finish the job?! Izagirre and Dowsett leading in the group of favourites right behind them!
Izagirre leading in the peloton, but the four leaders only 500 meters away from glory now!
The Spaniard sits down! Adios yellow jersey?! Meanwhile, Siskevicius still leads the way for the stage win with 300 meters to go!
200 meters to go for the Zalgiris rider, as the battle for the yellow jersey takes another turn! There’s a small gap between the first group of favourites and Paillot, the kind of gap you don’t want to see when you are only two seconds ahead in the GC!
A gradient of over 16% means nothing for Siskevicius, as he starts cheering and celebrates his win without holding onto his bike!
A great ride by Vuillermoz to take second for BNZ, while Le Gac (3rd) and Phodingam (4th) also finish ahead of the favourites.
Dunbar (5th) wins the peloton sprint ahead of Izagirre (6th), Moscon (7th) and De Plus (8th), while yellow Paillot holds on impressively! If the break had been caught, Izagirre would have been wearing yellow! Anyway, that did not happen, so Paillot wins the Tour of Britain by two seconds!
