ORICA-GreenEDGE’s Adam Yates avoided a series of late race crashes on the penultimate stage of the Tour of Turkey to finish on bunch time in Izmir. The neo-pro retains his 1” advantage over Rein Taaramäe (Cofidis) ahead of Sunday’s circuit race in Istanbul. Elia Viviani (Cannondale) beat out Andrea Guardini (Astana) and Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma - Quick-Step) in the high-speed sprint finish. 

A three rider breakaway slipped up the road in the opening kilometres of the lumpy road stage. Piotr Gawronski (CCC Polsat Polkowice), Wesley Kreder (Want – Group Gobert) and Wesley Sulzberger (Drapac) built up a maximum advantage of 2’55 in the first hour of the stage. With Sulzberger best placed on the overall classification in 34^th place at 10’44, Yates and company were happy to allow the gap to hover around the three minute mark until the business end of the stage.

Whilst ORICA-GreenEDGE would have allowed the leaders a small advantage all the way to the finish, Cannondale and Omega Pharma – Quick-Step were invested in a field sprint. They duly sent riders to the head of the peloton to take up the chase. Twenty five kilometres from the finish, the gap had fallen below the minute mark. The bunch overtook the leaders nine kilometres from the line.

“Our tactic today was to let an early break go and control it with a few riders. We wanted to keep Adam out of trouble and ensure he finished in the bunch. We managed to do all of that. We did have a slight scare with the crashes at the end, but we did all right to avoid them.” - Assistant Sport Director Julian Dean

“We eased up a little bit as we went through that last corner. We lost a couple places so we didn’t come down. In that second crash, we just got lucky. We were going pretty fast. When you’re going at such high speeds, you don’t have time to slow down, but we did manage to avoid it. Other than that, the day was quite stress free.” - Adam Yates