Matej Mohoric seals single second victory of 2023 Tour de Pologne as Tim Merlier sprints to final stage win

Matej Mohoric has been crowned the 2023 Tour de Pologne winner by a single second ahead of Joao Almeida after the seventh and final stage of the race saw Tim Merlier take victory in a bunch sprint.

Stage 7 of the Tour de Pologne will decide the overall classification as Matej Mohoric and João Almeida enter the final day of the race with the same, whilst the sprinters will take the reigns on the final day.

With the GC battle so tight, bonus seconds would prove to be important. As such the peloton did not allow the break to form before the intermediate sprint.

At that sprint it was Mohoric who took it, gaining three seconds ahead of Almeida in second taking two bonus seconds, giving the Slovenian a single second advantage in the GC.

After that a break did eventually go, Dorian Godon, Christian Scaroni and Marcin Budzinski riding at the head of the race and at one point, Scaroni actually moved into the virtual lead of the general classification.

With 16km to go, Scaroni was the first to be caught by the bunch however and a few moments later his two breakaway companions were also back in the peloton.

With around 8km to go there was a big crash in the peloton with a number of riders including Michal Kwiatkowski and Pascal Ackermann caught up. Thankfully, the INEOS Grenadiers rider was paced back into the bunch by his team, keeping his 3rd place on GC.

In the final sprint to the line, Soudal - Quick-Step's Tim Merlier proved to once again be the quickest, doubling up after his victory on stage 1.

Results powered by FirstCycling.com