Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain-Victorious) narrowly took victory in the crash-marred final sprint of stage 2 of the Tour of Slovenia after a photo finish with Alberto Dainese (Tudor).
The Italian opened up the sprint in first after a great Tudor lead-out, however, Bauhaus was waiting in the slipstream and pulled out of it, overtaking Dainese by a narrow margin with a great bike throw.
There was another narrow finish for third between Luca Mezgec (Jayco AlUla) and Jonas Koch (Bora-Hanshgrohe) but it was the former on home Slovenian roads who rounded out the podium, sprinting in place of stage 1 winner Dylan Groenewegen after he got dropped earlier in the day.
With Groenwegen not making it back in after being forced to chase on for much of the day, Bauhaus took over the lead of the race in Rogaška Slatina.
“It was for us sprinters and for me, a super hard day on the climb in the middle of the stage. UAE and other guys really went a hard pace. I was with Dainese and Kristoff on top of the climb and we could come back and the last 40-50km was just basically suffering for sprinters," said Bauhaus describing the tough undulating day from Žalec to Rogaška Slatina.
"I prepared really well so I’m happy with my legs and then in the sprint, it was just squeezing everything out. I’m really happy I could pass Dainese and take the win.”
Bauhaus is in Slovenia preparing for another appearance at the Tour de France after taking two podium finishes at the Giro d'Italia and he's approaching top form.
“Every year I improve and I get stronger. After the Giro I was in three weeks in Mallorca, working on my threshold and my sprint because the Tour is coming up and it’s also a big goal for me. And these days you also need to be really strong as a sprinter," he said, before admitting that
“Bunch sprint is always about small details and yesterday I was third - I think it was a good result. Obviously, you always want to win but it's super difficult, Groenewegen and Kristoff, they are world-class bike riders so yesterday we did good, not perfect. Today we did really amazing teamwork from the start to the end so it’s really nice to pay my team back also.”
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