Image 1 of 10
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…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…