Gabrovski wins 2012 Tour of Turkey

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Theo Bos of Rabobank ended the 2012 Presidential Tour of Turkey as he started it, by winning. He took the final sprint in Istanbul, ahead of Andrew Fenn (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) and Stefan Van Dijk (Accent Jobs-Willems Veranda's). Ivailo Gabrovski claimed the overall title in the race for Team Kornu-Torku Seker Spor, a stunning win for the local Turkish team.

The closing stage was a short one, only 121 km, and ended with eight laps of a circuit course in downtown Istanbul. The race crossed from Europe to Asia, as the organisers put it, by crossing the bridge over the Bosporus. And shortly thereafter, four riders got away: Vladimir Gusev (Katusha), Matteo Trentin (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), Damien Gaudin (Europcar) and Ivan Stevic (Salcano-Arnavutkoy).

The gap got up to 3:25 on the circuit course before Rabobank and Farnese Vini took over the chase work, and with only two laps to go, it had dropped to two minutes. Gusev came into the stage in 12th place, only 3:46 down on leader Gabrovski, and he was eager to try and claim the lead, so the chase was serious.

However, they took a lead of only 40 seconds into the final lap. With 7km to go, Trentin took off from the group, and only one km later, the field caught the other three. Trentin was also soon caught up, as Europcar led the charge.

The final turn in the course came with 4km to go, and as the field successfully negotiated the sharp turn, Romain Bardet of AG2R attacked. A crash with about 3km left took out a number of top sprinters, including Matt Goss (GreenEdge) and Marcel Kittel (Argos-Shimano).

The crash upset all the sprint trains, and left Andre Greipel leading things up to the final kilometre. Bos opened the sprint and was able to hang on, to claim both the first and final stages of the race.

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