CRO Race 2025 Stage 6

October 5, 2025 The start in Samobor is only about 30KM away from the capital city of Zagreb and the finish but the riders won't stop when they get there. They carry on travelling West for an 85KM loop with an intermediate sprint in Dugo Selo and a 1KM, 6% climb in Sveti Ivan Zelina before arriving back in Zagreb. The final 15KM are on a short, criterium style lap down and back on the Avenija Većeslava Holjevca with crossings of the Sava River each time. There are 180 degree turns on either end with the last turn coming 350M before the finish line for the likely bunch sprint. For the most part, the weather has cooperated this week but the tides turned today. When the flag dropped, rain was hammering down and riders were in full winter apparel with rain jackets and leg warmers. Five riders were able to escape the endless road spray in the peloton and go up the road to form the break away including Mark Stewart of Solution Tech-Vini Fantini, Thibault Guernalec of Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Hugo Aznar of Equipo Kern Pharma, Roan Konings of Metec-SOLARWATT, and once again, Martin Voltr of ATT Investments. With 95KM to go, they had just 1 minute but the peloton were slowing down and the gap would go out. Soudal Quickstep started riding when the gap got to around 2 minutes and kept the race consistently within 90 seconds with help from Israel-Premier Tech. Guernalec dropped out of the break and was reabsorbed into the peloton at 28KM to go. The gap was still holding at just over 90 seconds as the race entered the streets of Zagreb with 18KM to go. Due to the treacherous conditions, the organizers decided to lock in the GC times at the first crossing of the finish line but allowed the stage to carry on all the way to the finish. With just under 2 laps and 8KM to go, the gap was still 1 minute and it was still just Israel-Premier Tech and Soudal Quickstep riding in the peloton. The gap was halved over the next 4KM with UAE-XRG contributing but there was still a lot of ground to make up in just a few kilometers. Jayco AlUla sent men to the front and the combined effort of the bunch had the race back together at 1.3KM to go. Ineos lined up at the front for Ben Turner and through the final corner, Turner was in second wheel with Danny van Poppel of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Paul Magnier of Soudal Quickstep, and Oded Kogut of Israel-Premier Tech queued up behind. Turner was forced to start his sprint from outside 200M to go after Dries Van Gestel of Soudal Quickstep pulled off the front of the peloton. Turner initially had enough to fend off both van Poppel and Magnier but he faded in the last 50M and Kogut had the legs to come around to take the win. Magnier and van Poppel filled out the podium with Turner behind in fourth place. As expected, there were no changes in GC which resulted in Brandon McNulty of UAE-XRG taking home the overall prize. Edoardo Zambanini of Bahrain Victorious took second place at 1 minute 39 seconds with Michał Kwiatkowski of Ineos in third, a further 10 seconds off.