Cavendish wins opening stage of Tour of Turkey

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Mark Cavendish (Etixx-QuickStep) proved his good form after winning the bunch sprint and the opening stage at the Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey on Sunday. The Manxman beat Australian youngster Caleb Ewan (Orica GreenEdge) and Nicola Ruffoni (Bardiani-CSF) in third. 

"I won this stage as well last year," Cavendish said. "We talked about the competition at the team meeting and we recognized that there are a lot of big sprinters at the race this year. So we knew it would be chaotic, and it really was in the last kilometers... It was nice to finish the job of the guys after what they did today."

Cavendish had a strong start to the season but recently suffered from an illness that he says he has now recovered from. “Ideally I’d have liked to have carried on further into the spring but I got sick in South Africa and really I needed to stop and get over the virus. I was still riding when I was a little bit on the limit,” he said.

“Just to stop, reset it, and get going again was quite nice so I don’t think I’m in as good condition as I could have been but I’m definitely happy with where I’m at, I’m happy with the strong team Etixx-QuickStep have brought here.”

Cavendish’s stage win granted him the early leader’s jersey at the eight-staged UCI 2.1 event with the same time of his sprint rivals.

The peloton kicked off the Tour of Turkey with a 145km flat road race from Alanya and back to Alanya. Within the first 10 kilometres of the start, five riders formed the first breakaway of the race with Mario Costa (Lampre-Merida), Alessandro Tonelli (Bardiani-CSF), Luis Mas (Caja Rural, Adam Phelan (Drapac) and Federico Zurlo (UnitedHealthcare).

Teams Lotto Soudal, Etixx-QuickStep and Torku SekerSpor led the peloton and allowed the breakaway riders a maximum lead of 3:35 minutes.

The five riders were caught with 20km to go on wide open roads, which offered the chance for nearly every team to try and organise their lead-out trains at the front of the field. The battle for positions among the top sprinters in the field was very aggressive.

Cavendish still had three of his teammates with him at the front of the race with under five kilometres to go, and used his train to keep him in good position for the final sprint in Alanya.

Runner-up Ewan was pleased with his performance despite missing out on the stage win by such a narrow margin.

“It feels a little bit surreal. It’s kind of weird racing him [Cavendish] I guess, always watching him growing up and now actually racing him. And not just racing with him but being right up there against him - it’s pretty surreal feeling,” he said.

“If I had a better run I think could almost beat him. I came from way too far back and it was really close on the line so I don’t know. Maybe if I got a better run or came off his wheel then maybe I could have come a bit closer but obviously it’s good for confidence knowing I’m that close to him – it’s not such a big distance.”

The Tour of Turkey will continue with stage 2’s 182km road race starting from Alanya and finishing in Antalya on Monday.

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