Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates) narrowly fended off the peloton for a solo victory in stage 7 of the Tour of Turkey.
The Australian racer soared away on the second steeper part of a cat. 2 climb, went over the top alone and after a fast, technical finish stayed away to clinch the victory.
Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) brought home the remnants of the peloton on the 159.8 kilometre stage from Selcuk to Izmir. Cees Bol (Astana Qazaqstan) placed third.
After Vine’s fine lone effort, Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan) remains in the overall lead with just one flat stage remaining to wrap up the eight-day Tour of Turkey.
“It was all on the stage win,” he said afterwards, “I could have got the KoM points a little easier instead of going all out into the climb.”
“We hoped that the climb would see a lot of the helpers dropped and noone would be able to pull on the leadin through town.”
“I just emptied myself and then the sports director came through on the radio, said I had 50 seconds with 8 kilometres to go and I thought that could be enough.”
Twice second overall in the Tour of Turkey, Vine said he had been more than hungry for the win after he had had bad luck on the crucial stage 3, ending on the Babadag climb. His motivation to go solo had been based, he said “on 90% anger.”
“After crashing out of the Vuelta [a España] this was an opportunity for the end of the season and I trained pretty hard after recovering from that."
"To come here and just have bad luck all week, stomach problems on stage 3 and not being able to do anything and then a puncture yesterday (Friday) meaning I couldn’t even compete for the win….”
“This is a consolation prize, and it’s good to be able to show my form and get a win somehow. I’m glad I could give the team that.”
A fast and furious first segment of the stage saw Astana Qazaqstan and Alpecin-Deceuninck use up a lot of energy to keep numerous breakaway attempts under control. But then when late attacker Patryk Stosz (Voster-ATS) was caught with some 28 kilometres to go in a tunnel half-way up the final cat. 2 ascent, it finally seemed as if Philipsen’s team had likely done enough to keep things under control to guarantee a bunch sprint.
That though was not how Vine saw it. Already on the move to claim maximum KoM points on an early cat 2 ascent, the Australian used the tougher part of the second, final, cat.2 climb of the day to go clear again.
Vine's quest for his first win since the Tour Down Under solidified rapidly as he made it over the summit with around 30 seconds on Bingoal-WB chaser Alexis Guerin, while the bunch was nearly two minutes behind. Rattling down the technical, badly surfaced descent on the other side, two more riders, Eolo-KOMETA’s Andrea Pietrobon and Clément Alleno (Burgos-BH) broke away from the peloton, but Alpecin-Deceuninck were in the process of reorganizing the chase as well.
By the foot of the climb, some 15 kilometres of flat remained and things came down to a pure time trial battle between Vine and the peloton. As his title as 2023 Australian Time Trial Champion confirms, Vine’s skill in lone efforts has stood him in good stead before, but this time it was going to be very close.
The peloton swept up the chasers one by one as the race pounded along the flatter roads into Izmir and as they reached the coastal city, his gap was well under 30 seconds. A last loop back to the finish gave Vine a chance to see how quickly Alpecin were cutting into his lead, and he visibly redoubled his efforts to stay clear.
The chase was seriously affected by a crash on a 180-degree turn with less than two kilometres to go, but Philipsen was still in the ragged group of a dozen chasers closest behind Vine and the Australian’s dwindling options seemed all but impossible to maintain alive.
However, as he eased into the finishing straight, the margin was still just over 10 seconds and Vine culminated a thrilling finale with a victory that surely helped soothe the frustration of so much bad luck earlier in the week.
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