The final stage of Tirreno-Adriatico on Sunday may have ended up delivering the expected sprint but it was far from straightforward for the likes of Sam Welsford (Ineos Grenadiers) and Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) to get to the point where they could vie for victory. The climbs may have came early, but it turned out there was also another lofty challenge to overcome: Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) on the front and intent on putting in a big effort.
The climbing kicked in at less than 30km into the day of racing on the 143km stage 7, with two climbs in quick succession and while Alpecin-Premier Tech riders were swapping through to keep up the pace on the initial ascent and early on the second it was when Van der Poel took a position at the front at about 97km to go that the the field really began to splinter.
Then he stayed there for pretty much the entirety of the next 30km – in a move viewed as an in-race Milan-San Remo training effort – making it far from an easy task for the sprinters to reconnect, even though it was essentially just one rider that did the lions share of the work to both create the split and keep the chase at bay well into the flat finishing circuits.
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"This was crazy. The climb was so hard," Welsford told Cycling Pro Net after the stage. "They just rode so fast to drop the sprinters and I felt really good on the climb. I had all the guys around me pulling and every time I looked down I was doing over 500 watts and I was just like this is just incredible. We weren't catching them either."
"But the boys did a fantastic job on the climb for me. They paced me, looked after me and then in the circuit we had to chase pretty hard to catch the split and I think Van der Poel was pulling that by himself."
The first chase group, containing many of the sprinters, ultimately made it back with around 67km to go but that was not where the challenges ended for the riders who were hoping for a bunch battle.
"It was a crazy finish," said Welsford, who ended up taking second place behind Milan in a messy, close sprint where riders were spread across the road and separated by the smallest of margins.
For a start Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility) tried to get a jump on the fast finishers in the final seven kilometres, but a final effort from Welsford's teammate Filippo Ganna drew him back in at the last moment. Still that was also after a crash on a corner at 2.6km which took out some others, including Alpecin-Premier Tech's Jasper Philipsen.
Welsford, however, was among those who managed to avoid the crash – just.
"It's always going to happen when you have got four guys dive bombing for the same metre of road," said Welsford. "It was really close to me and thankfully I'm all right but hopefully all the guys who went down are OK because you don't want to see that on the last day of the race."
For Welsford it ended with a WorldTour stage podium finish – his fourth of the season so far – though of course another spot up the results tally was what he was really after.
"I felt really good today," Welsford told Cycling Pro Net. "The boys did really well for me so a bit disappointed with second, you know you always want to be on the top step but good signs of things coming."
