Britain's Matthew Brennan (Team Visma–Lease a Bike) sprinted to victory on stage 5 of the Tour de Pologne, claiming his first victory of the race ahead of compatriot Ben Turner (Team Ineos Grenadiers) in a fast finish in Zakopane. Despite a climb in the final 20km, the stage came down to a reduced bunch sprint on the uphill drag to the line, and though he launched early with over 200m to go, Brennan held on to win by two bikelengths.
Turner pushed him all the way to the line, but the stage 2 winner had to settle for second, whilst Andrea Bagioli (Lidl-Trek) finished third.
Race leader Paul Lapeira (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) finished in the bunch to hold onto the yellow jersey for another day.
A four-man breakaway had been up the road almost all day, but they were all caught 11km from the finish as the peloton battled it out for the win, with several attacks in the finale but ultimately everything coming together for a sprint.
This is Matthew Brennan's (Team Visma–Lease a Bike) ninth win of the season, and his first since turning 20 earlier this week, rounding out his time as the peloton's teenage sensation.
Going into the final weekend of racing, Paul Lapeira (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) leads by eight seconds over Victor Langellotti (Team Ineos Grenadiers) and 12 seconds ahead of Jan Christen (UAE Team Emirates XRG) who was trying to attack in the finale of stage 5 but was reeled in.
How it unfolded
It was another hilly day in Poland on Friday, though the opening 70km were flat, which allowed a break to go and build up a good gap. The break of the day, which formed just 5km into the stage, was made up of Jensen Plowright (Alpecin–Deceuninck), Huub Artz (Intermarché–Wanty), Patrick Gamper (Team Jayco AlUla) and Martin Svrček (Soudal–Quick-Step).
This quartet quickly built up a decent lead, maxing out at over six minutes at one point. Over the first climb and into the hills, Patrick Gamper took the first KoM at Kocierz, and the group continued to work well together, though their gap began to fall as the peloton ramped up their speed in the hills.
With 84km to go, Artz crashed in the break, which took a bit of impetus out of the group as they allowed him to come back on, and with 70km to go, the gap was down to three and a half minutes. In the peloton, Ineos Grenadiers, EF Education-EasyPost and Lidl-Trek were putting in the work trying to control the gap, with Lapeira and his Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale team sitting back slightly.
On the second and final categorised climb of the day to Przełęcz Krowiarki, the leaders held their own over the peloton, maintaining a three-minute gap at the top of the 8.6km ascent. On the flat that followed before the final, uncategorised climb, the gap gradually fell, and was at 1:50 with 30km to go.
As the road began to rise in the final 30km, despite not being categorised, it was Bahrain Victorious who came to the fore in the peloton to start to work to close the gap, which was slowly shrinking. Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe and Groupama–FDJ also joined the effort, as it became time to reel back in the day-long leaders.
With 20km to go, the quartet were just 38 seconds ahead of the speeding peloton, and Plowright and Artz tried to push on alone in front of the other two. Onto the climb proper, Visma–Lease a Bike also started to help the chase but Plowright and Artz were not going down without a fight, pushing their lead back up to a minute with 15km to go.
There seemed to be some hesitation in the bunch to go too hard on the climb at first, perhaps as several teams wanted to try and keep their sprinters safe for as long as possible, which played into the hands of the leaders, though Artz soon pushed on alone and Plowright was caught.
However, as the climb kicked up, the climbers spurred into action and the pace ramped up, with Artz reeling in with 11km to go. A number of riders then went on the counter-attack over the top of the climb, with Jan Christen (UAE Team Emirates XRG) and Alberto Bettiol (XDS Astana Team) going clear and pulling out a slender 15-second lead.
The pair drilled it down the descent before the kick up to the line, but still only had a small gap going into the final 5km as the chase action carried on behind them. With 2.5km to go, the gap was just eight seconds as the two leaders desperately tried to stay ahead.
With many sprinters still in the group, though, when the lead-outs started, it was game over for the attackers, and they were reeled in with 1.5km to go as a sprint approached in Zakopane, albeit a reduced group of only 38 riders, not including stage 4 winner Paul Magnier (Soudal–Quick-Step).
Michał Kwiatkowski (Team Ineos Grenadiers) did the bulk of the effort in the finale, trying to lead things out for Turner, whilst Lidl-Trek got organised in the final kilometre, but ultimately it was a flying sprint from Brennan, who launched from a few riders back, that secured the win.
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