Bevin takes overall lead with Stage 7 victory at Tour of Turkey

Patrick Bevin has moved into the overall lead at the Tour of Turkey after pushing past Jay Vine and Nicolas Edet to win the penultimate stage in Tekirdag.

Patrick Bevin of Israel-Premier Tech celebrates his Stage 7 victory at the Tour of Turkey Source: Getty Images

Bevin (Israel–Premier Tech) came into Stage 7 sitting 11 seconds behind leader Eduardo Sepulveda (Drone Hopper-Androni) and needed to make the most of the two climbs on offer.

The first, a 7.7 kilometre ascent at a 5.1 per cent gradient, allowed the field to fatigue before the New Zealander made his move on the second, stretching seven kilometres at 4.2 per cent.

Compatriot Corbin Strong was among the Israel–Premier Tech teammates to set up Bevin's attack, one that dropped Sepulveda with 30 kilometres remaining.

By that stage, the 31-year-old only had Vine (Alpecin-Fenix) and Edet (Cofidis) alongside him in the breakaway, and the gap soon grew to 50 seconds ahead of the flat, final kilometres.

Edet was the first to try and capitalise on Bevin's fatigue; launching himself forward to take the stage win, but the Frenchman failed to gain any separation.

With Vine still lurking, it was Bevin who instead made the next move, powering past his rivals to take the victory and a 20-second lead over the Australian in the general classification.

"On the last steep climb, my team rode really well," Bevin said after the race.

"We had a plan at the start of the day to ride hard into the last climb and it was a really tough stage.

"Despite the gradients not being overly steep the whole way up, there were some really sharp bits at the bottom and I felt, if we hit those really hard, we could get the elastic effect and put some guys into trouble. And we just had to ride.

"I shouldered a lot of the burden of that last break, I did a lot of the work and I got a bit of help from Jay but Nicolas didn't really want to help, so the stage was fully on the line."

Bevin's victory, his first since 2019 at the Tour Down Under, will now see him don the turquoise jersey for the final stage in Istanbul, where Vine and Sepulveda will look to erase his overall lead.