Tour of Britain stage 5: Wout van Aert celebrates a solo stage win(Image credit: SWPix)
Wout van Aert celebrates after his stage win(Image credit: SWPix)
Wout van Aert en route to victory(Image credit: SWPix)
Joey Rosskopf (Q36.5 Pro Cycling), Abram Stockman of Team TDT Unibet Cycling, Callum Ormiston of Team Global 6 Cycling in the breakaway(Image credit: SWPix)
The peloton on stage 5(Image credit: SWPix)
Jumbo-Visma lead the chase on stage 5(Image credit: SWPix)
Connor Swift gets a feed on stage 5(Image credit: SWPix)
Jumbo-VIsma leads the peloton(Image credit: SWPix)
Jumbo-Visma extended their winning run at the Tour of Britain to five days, continuing the Dutch team’s dominant week as Wout van Aert soloed to victory a kilometre from the line to win stage 5 in Felixstowe.
The day looked all set to conclude with another sprint finish, and likely another Olav Kooij win, as Jumbo-Visma controlled the race in the closing kilometres, but rather than set things up for the 21-year-old, the squad pulled a surprise move heading under the flamme rouge.
With Van Aert seemingly ready to provide the final touch to another sublime lead-out as Edoardo Affini pulled off the front, Kooij let a gap go heading around a left-hand bend.
That move let Van Aert steal a march on their sprint rivals, who were caught totally unprepared for a late attack. Nobody could muster a response from behind on the headwind run to the line, leaving Van Aert to claim his third win of the season and with it the race lead.
Three seconds behind him, Ethan Vernon (Great Britain) led home the peloton, outpacing Danny van Poppel (Bora-Hansgrohe) to fill out the podium.
Jumbo-Visma had played their part in controlling the peloton for much of the day but were caught out at an unmarshalled corner 8km from the finish line. The team rallied around on the suburban run-in, however, making it back to the front for the final 3km alongside Trinity Racing, Bolton Equities Black Spoke, and Uno-X.
First Nathan Van Hooydonck and then Edoardo Affini took up the work on the front, setting up another big sprint finish. But clearly, the team had a different idea, one that caught the riders from Movistar, Bora-Hansgrohe, and Ineos Grenadiers behind by surprise.
The late attack provided welcome respite from a procession of sprint finishes at the race, even if it was yet another win for the Dutch powerhouse team – their 57th of the 2023 season.
Over four hours earlier, Callum Ormiston (Global 6), Joey Rosskopf (Q36.5), and Abram Stockman (TDT-Unibet) had jumped from the peloton to make the breakaway on the longest day of the race – a 192km out-and-back course hitting the North Sea coast.
The trio got away after an early move including mountain classification leader James Fouché (Bolton Equities Black Spoke) went away on the first of two third-classification climbs of the day. The New Zealander took his KOM total to 37 over the top – 17 up on second-placed Harry Tanfield (TDT-Unibet) before the break established itself 162km out.
10km later they passed the second and last climb of the day and went on to enjoy a three-minute advantage over the peloton, which was controlled, predictably, by Jumbo-Visma, Movistar, and Ineos Grenadiers.
The two WorldTour teams largely held the gap around the two-minute mark on a quiet mid-section of the stage, while the breakaway trio entered the final 50km at 1:50 up on the peloton, though the gap gradually came down as the finish line loomed, hitting the minute mark at 30km out as the pace was upped behind.
At 20 to go, still with the same teams leading the chase, the break had just 30 seconds in hand as Ormiston dropped away from the break. The remaining duo battled on, but Stockman dropped 12km out before Rosskopf – who did well to push on alone – was eventually brought back 5km from the line.
Jumbo-Visma’s brief mishap 8km out provided some drama on the run towards Felixstowe, but they soon got back to the front, lining up in their familiar lead-out formation for the final 3km. Other teams joined them in the pacemaking, but nobody could wrest control for a sprint which never came.
In the end, it was a day which saw Olav Kooij finally beaten at the 2023 Tour of Britain, but it was another Jumbo-Visma man, the race’s superstar in Wout van Aert, who took the spoils.
Dani Ostanek is Senior News Writer at Cyclingnews, joining in 2017 as a freelance contributor and later being hired full-time. Before joining the team, they had written for numerous major publications in the cycling world, including CyclingWeekly and Rouleur.
Dani has reported from the world's top races, including the Tour de France, Road World Championships, and the spring Classics. They have interviewed many of the sport's biggest stars, including Mathieu van der Poel, Demi Vollering, and Remco Evenepoel. Their favourite races are the Giro d'Italia, Strade Bianche and Paris-Roubaix.
