Evenepoel animates first Tour of Britain test, but Grégoire impressively outsprints Alaphilippe

Until now, the Tour of Britain had been a big Visma | Lease a Bike party, with the Dutch team winning the first two stages, courtesy of Olav Kooij, and the third with Matthew Brennan. However, winning on Thursday would not be easy for the Killer Bees, as the final part of the stage featured short but steep hills.

The start of the stage was flat, and four riders took advantage of that fact. Rory Townsend (Q36.5), Cedric Beullens (Lotto), Victor Vercouillie (Flanders-Baloise), and Joshua Golliker (British selection) did so by breaking away right from the start. The peloton was okay with that and let them go, allowing the four to build up a lead of more than four minutes.

The lead steadily decreased, and by the time they reached the first serious hills, only a minute and a half remained. The peloton had slowly but surely picked up speed, and the long-awaited spectacle seemed to be unfolding.

With 25 kilometers to go, Evenepoel initiated the action. The Belgian accelerated on the first ascent of Burton Dassett Hill, a 900-meter climb at 7.3% that would ultimately also be the finish line. Bauke Mollema (Lidl-Trek) managed to keep up, as did Pavel Sivakov (UAE Emirates-XRG) and Andrew August (INEOS Grenadiers). At that point, the early breakaway was still ahead, but their lead was only half a minute.

The four chasers quickly caught up with the four breakaway riders, leaving us with eight riders at the front. That situation was momentary, as the peloton quickly caught up with the eight leaders. So we would be tackling the final climb for the second time with almost the entire pack.

We didn't see any accelerations, and we hadn't seen many riders drop back, so we entered the final 12-kilometer lap with a fairly large group. Olav Kooij was no longer there, nor were most of the other sprinters.

After another acceleration by Evenepoel, Andreas Leknessund broke away. The Norwegian from Uno-X quickly built up a slight lead, but his attempt failed with six kilometers to go. So the group came back together, and it looked like we were heading for an uphill sprint.

Teammate Martin Svrcek neatly dropped off Evenepoel, but the UAE Emirates-XRG men were also well positioned at the front in the run-up to the final climb. Evenepoel still managed to get through, while it was Grégoire who sprinted to victory with a powerful acceleration. In a spectacular uphill sprint, the Groupama-FDJ rider beat his compatriot Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor), who finished second.