Fernando Gaviria has taken the win on the final stage of the 2023 Tour de Romandie in a sprint finish whilst UAE Team Emirates's Adam Yates secured the overall race win.
The final day of the race. Stage 5 saw the most suitable day for the fast men. From Vufflens-la-Ville to Genève, the peloton tackled a day that featured two categorized climbs. A four-man breakaway went clear early on including Thomas Gloag (Jumbo-Visma), Robert Stannard (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Alexander Kamp (Tudor Pro Cycling Team) and Paul Lapeira (AG2R Citroën Team)
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With just over 30kms to go the early attackers were swallowed up by the peloton meaning it looked likely for a bunch sprint finish.
Geoffrey Bouchard had other ideas however, launching a counterattack and soon he was joined by a pair of Tudor Pro Cycling riders in Sébastien Reichenbach and Arthur Kluckers with their lead quickly reaching 20 seconds.
It was the Movistar Team that were pulling on the front of the peloton after having spent much of the second half of the stage chasing the main bunch, trying to get Fernando Gaviria back in contact after he had been dropped on an earlier climb.
Movistar's intentions are the front of the peloton were two-fold, firstly to keep the leading trio in contact but also to prevent any other of the sprinters that had been dropped earlier on from getting back into the pack.
With 10km left the leaders still had over 20 seconds on the peloton but by the time the race reached the 5km to go banner that time gap had been slashed to just 9 seconds.
Finally with just 2.2km to go the counter-attack was finally caught and the sprint lead-outs could begin in earnest.
Coming in to the last few hundred metres Ethan Hayter, looking for his second stage of the race looked to be in perfect position but Gaviria, launching his sprint early powered to a destructive victory with Nikias Arndt in second.
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