Mathieu van der Poel wins in Manchester to seal Tour of Britain victory

Mathieu van der Poel has won the 2019 Ovo Energy Tour of Britain after winning the final stage in Manchester, his third stage win of the week.

Earlier, his Corenden Circus team mates ensured that his closest rival, Matteo Trentin of Mitchelton-Scott, could not pick up the intermediate sprint bonus seconds he needed to have a realistic hope of overhauling the Dutchman.

The final day’s racing, which began in Altrincham, ended with van der Poel and Cees Bol of Team Sunweb going shoulder-to-shoulder in a very hard fought sprint, the overall winner taking it by a whisker to complete a hat-trick of stage victories this week and Trentin finishing third.

Stage and overall winner Mathieu van der Poel

It wasn’t an easy day today, a lot of teams tried to attack us. Coming into Tour of Britain I didn’t really think it was possible because of the time trial which I hadn’t done in a really long time. 

But after the time trial I started to believe I could win the GC, but today was harder than I thought it would be and I’m really happy with the feeling also today and it’s been a good week for us.

They’ve really over done it I think, really, I’m proud of them [he said of his team-mates]. We are not the biggest team here, but they gave everything they had, also after the steep climb we were still three riders in the first group, and they did an amazing job after yesterday.