Brady Gilmore has become Australia's newest WorldTour cycling winner, earning a thrilling sprint victory on the final stage of the Tour of Catalunya in Barcelona in front of his team's soccer superstar co-owner Andres Iniesta.
Gilmore, a 24-year-old from Kalgoorlie, was left elated by his "amazing' first WorldTour win in the traditional race-ending 95km stage around the streets of Barcelona on Sunday as double Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard sealed the overall week-long race triumph.
Gilmore was cheered to his win by Andres Iniesta, the former Barcelona and Spain World Cup-winning great who now co-owns the NSN cycling team which took over the ill-fated Israel-Premier Tech team in November.
"It's actually our team's home race, and Iniesta was here this morning in the bus, listening to our team meeting," enthused Gilmore.
"We had the plan of what we're going to do, and we did it -- so we showed him how good we can be. It's just been amazing.
"This WorldTour level is super high, and everyone's so strong, so it's super hard. So to finally get it done, it feels awesome."
Rising star Gilmore, winner of the Tour of Taiwan last year, started the season well in Australia with third place in the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race and a couple of near-misses on stages of the Tour Down Under,
"So I had confidence here, but it's been a super hard week," he said. "I just really rode it smart today, my teammates helped me amazingly, and I could just get there in the end and time my sprint perfect."
On the undulating circuit around Montjuic, the site of Barcelona's 1992 Olympic stadium, he pipped French ace Dorian Godon, the stage favourite, with a lunge for the line.
Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel was among those who'd pushed fpr victory on the stage, but Vingegaard checked every move and finished safely in the front group to secure overall victory by one minute 22 seconds from Frenchman Lenny Martinez. Evenepoel was fifth overall, 2:13 adrift.
Jayco AlUla's Ben O'Connor was the leading Australian in 13th place, with former Giro winner Jay Hindley 17th for Red Bull BORA-hansgrohe.
Meanwhile, in the day's other big European race, Belgian sprint star Jasper Philipsen claimed a home victory in the In Flanders Fields classic.
Philipsen won the race formerly known as Gent-Wevelgem over 240.8km in a group sprint ahead of Denmark's Tobias Lund Andresen and Frenchman Christophe Laporte.
