Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) has said that he will donate the prize money from his narrow overall victory in the Tour de Pologne on Friday to charities helping the victims of today’s flash floods in Slovenia.
Following torrential rain overnight, major floods devastated parts of Slovenia early today, leaving several towns underwater, buildings destroyed, and many roads rendered impassable. With telecommunications badly damaged and rains set to continue, it is not yet clear how many lives have been lost.
Tied on time with João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) before Friday’s final flat stage into Krakow, Mohoric finally won the Tour de Pologne by one second after beating his Portuguese rival in an intermediate sprint.
But while willing to discuss the race in his press conference, Mohoric made it clear his thoughts were very much elsewhere following the news of the disastrous floods currently affecting his country.
As Mohoric pointed out, the battle could not have been any closer, but in the intermediate sprint duel, he just managed to outpace Almeida. In every encounter with the Portuguese racer, in fact - at Karpacz for the victory on stage 2, then in the uphill sprint in Bielsko-Biala where he outsprinted Almeida for second and again on stage 7’s intermediate - Mohoric has beaten Almeida by the bare minimum.
But on each occasion, having the upper hand, albeit by a painfully narrow margin, has taken the Slovenian a step closer to overall victory.
“If I had been a single bike length slower at that sprint, then I would have lost the race,” Mohoric concluded, “so I can only thank my teammates for this. They’ve been working hard all week, and tonight we will celebrate.”
“After what happened this morning, my heart was with all the people of Slovenia who lost their homes and lives in those floods. It was horrible and actually quite hard to focus on the race,” Mohoric told reporters.
“As soon as I get back to Slovenia, I will donate all the prize money from the race to charity and try to help as much as I can financially.”
“Obviously, I can’t fight floods or help the fire service directly because I don’t know how to. But my heart is with all the people who are suffering at the moment.”
Asked by reporters about the final stage, the last standout in the GC duel between Almeida and Mohoric took place in an intermediate sprint at kilometre 67.5, where a time bonus of three, two and one second was awarded.
Finishing ahead of Mohoric would have been enough to tip the balance of the overall in Almeida’s favour. But after holding onto the GC lead in the Katowice time trial on Thursday by hundredths of seconds, at the intermediate sprint, Mohoric successfully fended off Almeida’s final bid to snatch back enough time to claim the GC.
“We did a lot of forward planning about that sprint,” Mohoric told reporters after beating Almeida in a drawn-out battle for the line, just as he had done on the stage 2 summit finish at Karpacz, the day he first took the lead.
“We knew that UAE would try to take their chance because we would have done the same if we had been in their position," he said.
“But it was a little bit obvious that Almeida was not the favourite to win that sprint. It was a tricky approach. So we made sure everybody knew what they had to do, and we executed it to perfection.
“[Lead-out man and teammate] Andrea Pasqualon took me to 50 metres, and then I managed to win the sprint and take the bonus I needed to defend my jersey.”
