Hard work throughout the day by Cofidis on stage 4 of the Tour of Turkey was rewarded with a bunch sprint victory for their fastman Stanisław Aniołkowski.
Modern Adventure's Riley Pickrell took second on the short, rugged trek from Marmaris to Fethiye, with Davide Persico in third (MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort).
The winner of Turkey's opening two sprint stages, Belgium's Tom Crabbe (Flanders-Baloise), was swamped on one side of the long dash along the seafront, and Fernando Gaviria (Caja Rural Seguros RCA) launched his sprint too early. But Aniołkowski timed it perfectly and came from late behind Pickrell to cross the line with half a bikelength to spare.
Whilst the Polish racer could celebrate his first win since a stage of the Tour of Hellas nearly three years ago, overall leader Iván Parra (Equipo Kern Pharma) remained safely in the lead for a second straight day.
"I really waited for this for so long, all the times top ten or top five, so I would like to say a big thank you to my team, they did today an amazing job to make the race a bit harder. For me, that's a bit better because I'm climbing a bit better than the other guys," Aniołkowski said after the stage.
"I just finished off their job. I'm very proud of what they did today for me. And a big thank you for the team for trusting in me all the time. I also never gave up.
"I was almost boxed in with one kilometre to go, but I said - again, probably I cannot sprint. But luckily, this time I found a good gap, and I could go for the finish. I hope this gives me confidence for the next sprints and I can unblock myself."
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For the first hour, barring a couple of very short-lived attacks, the peloton largely remained together, rocketing along at an average speed of over 50kph.
One interesting seven-rider move emerged at the halfway point with around 65km to go, sparked by Polti-VisitMalta's Dario Belletta and including young American Jonah Killy (Tartoletto-Isorex), and reaching an advantage of over two minutes.
However, Alpecin-Premier Tech and Equipo Kern Pharma's driving pace behind them for Parra ensured the group was kept on a narrow leash, and shortly after the summit of the one classified ascent, a grindingly long third-category climb peaking out with 37km to go, the last two of the seven breakaways were all reeled in.
Such a short stage on varied terrain and dry weather was always going to spark lots of action late on, and repeated attacks in the rugged but broad highway in the last 20km caused numerous large groups to splinter off and then be reabsorbed. Mario Aparicio (Burgos Burpellet BH) was one very active attacker in the perpetually fraught finale, shearing away solo, but Modern Adventure closed down that move.
Then, as the race reached the much flatter run-in along the coast to Fethiye, the peloton became more cohesive again, with a lone rider from Tom Crabbe's Flanders-Baloise squad combining with Cofidis and TotalEnergies to take control.
A hefty contingent of Modern Adventure riders added their collective shoulder to the wheel with six kilometres to go, and on a day very much made for the fastmen – in the race's last visit to Fethiye in 2017, Sam Bennett won the stage – it was clear that this would come down to a bunch sprint.
Swinging onto the very long finishing straight, Modern Adventure dropped back to be replaced by Picnic-PostNL and Flanders-Baloise again, but the distance made it difficult for any squad to dominate. Gaviria went from distance, but it was impossible for him to maintain his lead, and then Aniołkowski finished it off in style.
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
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Fonte original: Cyclingnews