Solid teamwork and a fast, late sprint helped Britain's Ben Turner clinch victory in the toughest stage of the 2025 Tour de Pologne on Tuesday. But if delighted with his first WorldTour triumph, the 26-year-old understandably had far more mixed feelings regarding how the race itself had played out.
At 15 kilometres from the finish in Walbrzych in southern Poland, the stage was suspended for 15 minutes following a massive crash on a fast downhill. A three-rider break and bunch were made to wait as organisers decided what action to take, given there were several injured riders, including race leader Paul Lapeira (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale).
After racing finally resumed, albeit with GC times neutralised and only the stage in play, Turner was present in a 50-strong front group which reeled in the break and several last-minute attacks. Finally a predictably uncontrolled sprint - given the very unusual circumstances and the lack of fast men in the final group on a very hilly stage - decided the day's racing.
Turner's only previous win, in the Vuelta a Murcia back in 2023, had come on a similarly slightly rising finish. But understandably most of the questions in his post-stage interview were focussed on the accident which had shaped so much of the day's racing.
"It was really chaos all day, it was a super hard parcours anyway, it was on from the go," Turner said about the stage with 3,500 metres of vertical climbing and multiple short, punishing ascents.
"You always just want to stay on the front on this circuit. it was really unfortunate with that massive crash but hopefully they’re all ok, it looked nasty. I just hope that they’re OK."
Turner was not prepared to give an opinion on whether the organisers had taken the right decision to briefly neutralize the stage, saying, "I don't know what happened, there was ambulances involved so I can't comment on that".
"You never want to see that happen to colleagues so all the best to them, I really hope they can come back and be OK."
For riders to regain their original 'race mindset' after such a fraught finale is never straightforward, and Turner confirmed that he deliberately tried to keep thinking about what was to come rather than what had just happened.
"You go through quite a lot of thoughts. I tried to stay focused.
"I had a gel and I focused for the final. I just tried to understand what was coming up, and just how we were going to do the sprint and just think about everything else afterwards."
Following the neutralisation, he said, they made a plan because "I had good legs".
"I was a bit unsure but I had a phenomenal lead-out from the boys so I was glad we could pull it off.
"We spoke with the team and we made the decision to go for me or Victor [Langellotti, teammate], because obviously Victor finishes super well on this kind of finish as well. I’m happy we chose myself and I could pull it off in the end."
