Jake Stewart sailed to an accomplished sprint victory in M\u00e2con after a hilly day out and a desperate chase by the peloton at the end of the 183km outing.<\/p>\n
It was a first WorldTour victory for the British Israel-Premier Tech rider, who went for a long sprint from 300 metres with a view to outwitting favourite Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek).<\/p>\n
It worked: he comfortably held off sprint rivals Axel Laurance (Ineos Grenadiers) and S\u00f8ren W\u00e6renskold (Uno-X Mobility) for second and third place, with Milan finishing fifth.<\/p>\n
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Remco Evenepoel<\/a> retained the yellow jersey, despite crashing on a tricky 180-degree roundabout turn in the final run-in, which became dubbed ‘the U-bend’. The Belgian rode into the finish with a scuffed jersey shoulder, apparently nursing a cut on his finger but otherwise apparently riding comfortably.<\/p>\n Beyond that there was little significant change in the higher GC placings, save for stage three winner Iv\u00e1n Romeo<\/a> (Movistar) slipping from third to sixth after being caught on the wrong side of the 22-second gap to the front group of finishers. Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Tadej Poga\u010dar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) remain at 16sec and 38sec respectively.<\/p>\n This is turning out to be a rather successful season for Stewart \u2013 the first time he has scored two wins a season since starting his WorldTour career, with today representing his first win in a WorldTour race.<\/p>\n It came almost by chance, with Stewart taking over after his fast-finishing team-mate Pascal Ackermann crashed out. With the Coventry rider’s contract at Israel-Premier Tech expiring this season, he wasn’t slow to seize the opportunity.<\/p>\n “This one feels good,” he said. “It’s such a shame with Ackermann, who crashed today\u2026 I’m gutted he didn’t get to contest the finish.<\/p>\n “It was handed over to me for the final bit. The boys backed me, the DSs backed me, the team backed me and did an awesome job, I’m just so happy I could finish it off for them.<\/p>\n He added: “I’ve just been getting better and better this season, I obviously took the win in [Four Days of] Dunkerque, and I was so close on the first stage, so to get redemption here, which was the last opportunity for us, is really good.”<\/p>\n