Diego Ulissi took the Presidential Tour of Turkey, defending a slim lead through a tricky final stage of the race, which was taken by the Belgian sprinter Eduard Theuns, winning on his last start for the Trek Segafredo’s team.
He was helped greatly by Sam Bennett, a four-time winner this week for Bora-Hansgrohe, falling when prominent just around the final corner, leaving Theuns to sprint to just his second victory since the Stage 13 of the 2016 Tour de France, when he took a horrible crash that meant a long time off the bike and a long road back to full fitness.
Behind him, Ulussi took what was a more comfortable victory than the 12 seconds over Astana’s Jesper Hansen with Androni Giocattoli’s Fausto Masnada rounding off the podium 29 seconds back.
Ulissi took the race lead at the Selcuk summit finish on Stage 4, with his UAE Emirates Team catching the early break and then driving a powerful pace into the bottom of the climb with Darwin Atapuma closing down several attacks before Przemyslaw Niemiec took the leading group down below 12 riders.
At that point, Wilier Triestina’s Daniel Martinez launched an attack that Wonder Godoy, Ulissi, Hansen and Masnada could follow and he waited for the attacker to fade before then launching his winning move to take the stage by five seconds, and the leader’s jersey that he would not relinquish.
It was a successful week to cap a strong ending to the season for Ulissi, and the week’s other big winner was Sam Bennett, with the Irishman taking four sprint wins in five days and showing the level of sprinting talent that is at Bora, with world Champion Peter Sagan also present on their squad going into next year. Bennett came close to take a Grand Tour stage at the Giro and will hope to break that duck next year.