Jasper Philipsen has made it two out of two on stage 2 of the Tour of Turkey as the Alpecin-Deceuninck racer outgunned Cees Bol (Astana-Qazaqstan) in a tough uphill sprint.
Philipsen clinched the 40th victory of his career and 17th of this season after Bol made a late charge for the line, but Philipsen powered past the Dutchman just in time for the win.
The Belgian sprinter thus remains in the race lead for a second straight day, after a hilly 166.2 kilometre stage from Kemer to Kalkan.
The last riders from a three-man break were reeled in by Alpecin-Deceuninck with 13 kilometres to go, and then after a series of brief attacks in the finale, Philipsen timed his late charge perfectly to claim the victory.
"It was a really hard finish, I was on the limit and at the end of the season, everything going uphill hurts even more," Philipsen said in a race organisation interview.
"Cees did a really good sprint, but it was a long climb to the finish. I knew somebody was going to have a go, and I didn't expect it to be that hard but when the finish line was approaching I felt I had a bit more power in the legs."
"It's always nice to get the win, even more on a hard finish like this one."
A lumpy stage with a cat. 2 ascent in the last 50 kilometres likely to shape the race, it was up to Alpecin-Deceuninck to keep control of the bunch and the break of three, Lennert Teugels (Bingoal WB), Artur Sowinski (Voster-ATS),and Matteo Amella (Corratec-Selle Italia) for all of the day.
The cat. 2 predictably eliminated a number of sprinters from the running- But with the main challenge of the day overcome by Philipsen, a bunch sprint still looked like the most likely outcome, and Alpecin Deceuninck logically did the bulk of the work for the overwhelming favourite.
An attack by Amella on a small rise late on saw Sowinski come across and the duo briefly pushed their gap up to around two minutes, a series of stiff little unclassified coastal climbs in the final hour subsequently making for a more uneven chase behind.
However, the break was finally reeled in with 13 kilometres to go and although UAE Team Emirates provided a brief injection of pace, the mood was far more relaxed than Sunday's fraught finale.
With the finish town of Kalkan almost in sight, stage 2 showed some sign of bursting into life as Eolo-Kometa and Bingoal-WB tried briefly to wake things up, only for the top teams like UAE repress the mini-rebellion with attacks of their own. Finn Fisher-Black (UAE Team Emirates) made one brief surge away on a lengthy slight rise, stringing out the peloton and Bora-Hansgrohe launched a couple of their men off the front. Yet the blue-clad troops of Alpecin-Deceuninck with Philipsen in the turquoise jersey were never too far out of the running and even as the road steepened notably in the last kilometre, Philipsen was still visible close to the head of affairs.
Bol's brutal acceleration briefly looked as if it might have caught Philipsen and co. by surprise in the last possible moment and 30 metres from the line, Bol was still ahead. But Philipsen had, as he said later, just enough energy to storm past, winning the stage by three-quarters of a bike length, with Luca Colnaghi (Green Project-Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè) rounding out the day's podium.
Tuesday's stage will see the fastmen take a definitive back seat as the 2023 Tour of Turkey tackles its first major uphill finish, an 18-kilometre ascent to Fethiye averaging out at a daunting 10%. However, Philipsen has more than fulfilled his obligations with back-to-back wins and two days in the lead, and more victories may well yet be to come.
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