After stages at the Tour de France, Tour of Slovenia and Tour de Pologne, along with the GC and points jersey in Poland, all in the last two months, Team Bahrain Victorious’ Matej Mohoric took yet another win yesterday, this time on the closing day of the Renewi Tour in Belgium.
The parcours was a hilly 187 kilometres from Riemst to Bilzen, in the Flandrian half of Belgium, and ended with a reduced sprint in which Mohoric eased past some of the strongest riders on the startlist.
“I’m feeling super good at the moment; my condition is at its peak,” said the Slovenian afterwards. “I’m enjoying myself on the bike right now and trying to make the most of every stage I enter, and I’m very happy about today.”
With the roads slippery and the riders unhappy about the safety of the finishing circuit, the peloton stopped racing and protested to the organisers with 84km remaining. As a result, an agreement was reached to take the times 5.1km from the line and to remove the bonus seconds.
That decision meant the Slovenian’s chance of making the podium had effectively gone (he remained seventh overall in the end), but he was his typical balanced self when commenting on the controversy.
“It was such a complicated finish that the riders didn’t want to take the risk of crashing when contesting the finish. It was a tough call – we need to respect the organisation; we knew what the course was months ago, so this decision should have been taken before and not during the race. Today the peloton wanted to make a statement. We felt sorry for the organisers to have done this, and maybe it was unfair on them, but we feel like it’s time to do something. Perhaps we can help push the UCI and the rule makers to be more precise about what is and what isn’t acceptable for particular stage races, because for a peloton this size, it wasn’t ideal.
I should also say that I may be biased because it suits me, so maybe it’s hard for me to be objective, but I think the rules need to be clearer, and first & foremost, these things need to be decided in advance, not on the day of the race.”
Attacking alone 17km out, the Bahrain Victorious leader attempted to create a significant gap, but no-one else worked with him, and after his move was covered by UAE’s Matteo Trentin, a front group came back together.
“I tried to make a gap, to go on my own and fight for the GC,” he reflected. “But the headwind was too much and UAE had by far the strongest team so they were able to pull it back together. I refocused after that, tried to recover and went all in for the stage win, and I’m super happy to have been able to pull it off.”
In the flat final straight, the 28-year-old used all his experience, following Trentin and picking the perfect time to sail round the Italian and raise his arms yet again.
“As a team we had earmarked this stage from the start. We knew it could be the day to take advantage in the GC, but unfortunately for me there were no time bonuses in the end. It was a very nice effort from all the team, who did an incredible lead out for the last climb when I tried to attack but couldn’t make the difference. Congratulations to Tim Wellens who fully deserved the overall victory.
“I waited until late because I knew the line was quite a way from the last corner. I was completely on my knees, so I knew everyone behind me would be the same because of the nature of the course. It was always going to be tricky – you need to be in the first three positions to fight for the stage but you need to wait for the right moment. Today wasn’t so much about speed as about momentum and timing. I was a little bit lucky, but I’m super proud of this performance,” Mohoric concluded
Shortly after Mohoric’s success in Belgium, Phil Bauhaus sprinted to second place on the final stage of the Deutschland Tour (Hannover-Bremen, 175.6km).
TBV’s German sprinter got pipped on the line, as Arvid De Kleijn (Tudor) won the predicted sprint in Bremen, with Mario Mayrhofer (Team DSM) finishing 3rd.
Bahrain Victorious ended the Deutschland Tour with three top 5 results on the books.
After the short TT prologue that opened the 5-day stage race which ran from south to North Germany, stage 1 was a day for the classic specialists. In Merzig, Bahrain had two of the top ten as Pello Bilbao crossed the finish line in fifth place, three seconds behind the leading trio, and Nikias Arndt ninth.
The Basque rider, who was second in GC in 2022, tried without success to fight for the overall on stage 2, the other decisive day in this edition.
The Deutschland Tour concluded with two stages for the sprinters, where Bauhaus performed well on the challenging stage 3, contesting the bunch sprint in Essen and finishing fourth.
He bettered that result and took a podium on the last day of his home race.
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