It was a quiet day for the general classification riders at the Tour of Oman.
The penultimate stage was one for the sprinters, and knowing that, the peloton took it easy in the first two hours of the race, giving a three-man breakaway a buffer of over six minutes just a couple of kilometers into the day.
As was the case on the previous stages, Soudal Quick-Step was among the teams who controlled the bunch, setting the tempo behind the escapees and gradually bringing them back, the last of these being overhauled just before the ten-kilometer mark. The lead-out trains soon moved into position and kept things together on the wide roads in the finale, and the day came down to a mass gallop won by Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease A Bike).
All our riders concluded safely in the peloton, which means that Valentin Paret-Peintre kept the white jersey which has been in his possession ever since the second day of the race. The Frenchman will now go into the final stage of the Tour of Oman as the leader of the youth classification and only a couple of seconds from the overall podium, which will be decided on the viciously steep gradients of the Green Mountain.
Photo credit: ©Alex Broadway / Getty Images
