CALEB EWAN BOUNCES BACK IN STYLE

Australia’s Caleb Ewan returned to a winning mood almost one month after his season was put on a halt due to sickness one week before Milan-Sanremo, which was his big goal of the first part of 2022. He won Stage 1 of the 57th Tour of Türkiye in bunch sprint finish ahead of Belgium’s Jasper Philipsen and his compatriot Kaden Groves.

Turkish rider Halil Dogan of BikeAid was first to attack from the gun. Five riders joined him to make the day’s breakaway: Julen Irizar (Euskaltel), Jonathan Clarke (Wildlife Generation), Vitaliy Buts (Sakarya), Burak Abay (Spor Toto) and Abram Stockman (Saris Rouvy).

After their advantage reached five minutes, the teams of the sprinters, mainly Alpecin-Fenix, Bora-Hansgrohe, BikeExchange-Jayco and Israel-Premier Tech got organised to maintain the time gap around three minutes. Lotto-Soudal upped the tempo while approaching the 50km to go mark where the deficit of the peloton became less than one minute. 

Racing for the two subsidiary classifications, Buts took the white jersey of the Treasures of Türkiye Sprints as he passed first at km 87 and grabbed five points in the King of the Mountains competition before the regrouping with 35km remaining. Arkea-Samsic took control of the peloton up the 4-km long climb whose summit was located 29km before the end. Therefore Nicolas Edet, the winner of the climbers’ classification at the 2013 Vuelta a España, scored five KOM, just like Buts but the Frenchman was awarded the red jersey at the benefice of highest categorized climb. 

Lots of action took place in the downhill with Sean Bennett looking for glory within 20km to go and a few crashes happening at the back of the reduced pack. The American from China Glory surrendered 5km before the line. Patrick Bevin of Israel-Premier Tech tried to escape for the second time but it was eventually a bunch sprint in the coastal town of Kusadasi. Arkea-Samsic gave a strong lead out to Nacer Bouhanni but it was Ewan who came out of the box in a perfect timing to beat Jasper Philipsen, one of the riders who went down, and Kaden Groves.

Ewan leads the Tour of Türkiye for the first time in his career at his first participation. He’ll wear the Turquoise jersey on Stage 2 from Selçuk to Alaçati