Tour of Britain: Ewan wins in Aldeburgh

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Caleb Ewan (Orica-Scott) claimed his third victory of the Tour of Britain after a long sprint in Aldeburgh on stage 6. Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step Floors) was a distant second while Dylan Groenewegen (LottoNL-Jumbo) finished third.

The Australian took advantage of another technical finish - this time a sharp downhill turn 500 metres from the finish, which was complicated further by the wet roads.

While Zdenek Štybar (Quick-Step Floors) got his line wrong at the head of the peloton, holding out a foot in order to stay upright, Ewan took a perfect line behind teammate Luka Mezgec and emerged on the wheel of Gaviria's lead-out man, Maximiliano Richeze.

Already, the decisive gap had opened up, and as Richeze took the time to turn back in search of his sprinter, Ewan burst past in his distinctive aero tuck to take the win by a bike length.

"We got information over the radio during the race that the final corner was tight and off-camber as well," Ewan said after the stage. "Obviously we knew it was going to be wet as well so we definitely wanted to be in good position there.

"I was pretty much in perfect position, exactly where I wanted to be, and then one of the Quick-Step guys took a really bad line into the corner and he had unclipped and kind of pushed Luka, my lead-out man, into the barriers a bit. So I lost him through the corner and then I came through the corner on the inside and I decided I'd just go from there. It was a little bit of a longer sprint than I'd hoped for but luckily it paid off."

Ewan was positive about adding to his stage win tally too, targeting the final stage in Cardiff as the location for victory number four.

"I think tomorrow is going to be a bit too hard. There's that climb with under 10km to go and I think the teams that aren't here with a sprinter would really pinpoint that stage," he said. "But then definitely the last stage in Cardiff will be a sprint and I'll go full gas again for that."

The main GC positions, as well as the leadership of the minor classifications, remain unchanged after the stage.

How it unfolded

After a sojourn in Clacton for yesterday's time trial, it was back to normal and yet another flat stage likely to end with a mass sprint. A wet start meant a fast one for the peloton as the riders raced to escape the torrential downpour that emptied over Newmarket immediately after the start.

During the early kilometres, riders clipped off the front of the peloton in dribs and drabs but to no avail until a group of seven earned a gap after 12km.

Enrico Barbin (Bardiani-CSF), James Shaw (Lotto-Soudal), Harry Tanfield (Bike Channel-Canyon), Connor Swift (Madison-Genesis), Hayden McCormick (One Pro Cycling), Regan Gough (AnPost-Chain Reaction) and Jacob Hennessey (Great Britain) were the men who get to know each other out in front during the day's stage.

Their gap quickly jumped out to the two-minute mark, where it would remain for the majority of the day, give or take 30 seconds. This was largely thanks to the work of LottoNL-Jumbo, who were protecting race leader Lars Boom, and Orica-Scott, riding for double stage winner Caleb Ewan. However, the other usual suspects such as Dimension Data and Team Sky also spent time at the head of the peloton.

Given the composition of the breakaway, the three sprint points and single third category climb were virtually meaningless, so far as the competition for the respective jerseys go. Nevertheless, McCormick, Swift, and Hennessey shared the main spoils of the day - perhaps with a raid on the final two stages in mind.

By the time the break made it to the one and only climb of the day with 18km to ride, the peloton had only 1:20 to make up.

Shaw was the first to put in a dig at the front of the break with 8km to go. He succeeded in shedding a handful of companions, but the peloton, headed up by the familiar sight of Tao Geoghegan-Hart (Team Sky) was bearing down fast.

As one might expect, given the nature of the route, the break was eventually caught. With 3km remaining the race was back in the hands of the sprinter's teams, but not before a short attack by Alex Dowsett (Movistar).

After a glance at the road book in the morning, the final corner looked potentially decisive. And so it proved, with the man from Orica-Scott taking advantage of the remnants of the Quick Step Floors train to take his tenth win of the season.

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