Tirreno-Adriatico stage 7: Jonathan Milan wins sprint as Jonas Vingegaard confirms GC victory

Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) sprinted to victory on the final stage of Tirreno-Adriatico, whilst Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) finished safely in the bunch on the flat stage to seal victory after back-to-back wins in the mountains.

Milan was victorious on stage 7 following a hard-fought final sprint in San Benedetto del Tronto. The Lidl-Trek rider’s explosive power was enough to overcome a brave and well-orchestrated attack from Uno-X Mobility, who tried everything to take the win, first through a long-range effort from Søren Wærenskjold, then a final sprint from Alexander Kristoff, who was able to take second place on the stage. Movistar’s Davide Cimolai completed the top three, with Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Jasper Philipsen missing out in fourth.

Meanwhile, Visma-Lease a Bike put a cherry on top of their excellent week. Jonas Vingegaard safely completed the course to confirm his dominant win in the overall classification on the same day as Matteo Jorgenson sealed the GC win in Paris-Nice. Vingegaard raised the iconic trident trophy a year after Primož Roglič in 2023, marking back-to-back victories in Italy for Visma-Lease a Bike.

Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) secured second overall, whilst Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) completed the podium in third.

A fast final day in Italy

The final stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico took place once again on a loop beginning and ending in San Benedetto del Tronto and concluded with five laps of a flat circuit around the city along the shores of the Adriatic, the second of the race’s ‘two seas’.

With the GC hostilities all but concluded, it would fall to the sprinters and breakaway hopefuls to battle it out for the final honours on the concluding day of the race. A series of early lumps and bumps allowed for the early breakaway to take shape, and once again it featured Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), alongside his teammate Georg Steinhauser, Luke Rowe (Ineos Grenadiers), Damiano Caruso, Antonio Tiberi (both Bahrain-Victorious) and Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco AlUla).

The balance of breakaway versus sprint teams was dealt a series of blows with the abandons of Caleb Ewan overnight and Tim Merlier during the stage. That took the power of Jayco AlUla and Soudal Quick-Step out of the sprint chase, leaving Alpecin-Deceuninck and Lidl-Trek the primary aggressors as they sought to limit the advantage of the six-strong group up the road. And limit they did, with just one minute separating the leaders and the bunch with 75km still to race. Uno-X lent their power to the chase, and the deficit continued to tumble, perhaps closing in too soon with just 20 seconds remaining on the breakaway’s hiding to nothing with 45km still to race. The pace settled with two laps remaining, with the bunch holding the break at arm’s length, at around 30 seconds.

There was trouble for Richard Carapaz, who crashed hard with 23km to go, but the EF Education-EasyPost rider was able to sit up as he was tended to by medical staff.

With 15km to go, the break was reeled back in and the expected sprint looked set to transpire, but moving into the final 10km the GC teams settled the pace, Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale heading up the bunch in support of Ben O’Connor.

Moving within 5km of the finish, the tensions rose along with the tempo as the teams battled for position heading into the final tricky corners, and with just over 2km remaining, Intermarché-Wanty and Uno-X Mobility were at the head of the pack. Heading under the flamme rouge Astana-Qazaqstan, Movistar and Groupama-FDJ moved up, but Uno-X remained in pole position, and with around 800m remaining Søren Wærenskjold took a flyer and got a gap on the rest.

It was Lidl-Trek giving chase for Milan who rescued the bunch sprint outcome for the fast men, with lead-out Simone Consonni closing down Wærenskjold. He launched Milan with 150m remaining, the Italian unleashing the watts, and powering over the line to take his second stage win of the race and the maglia ciclamino as winner of the points classification, on what was the fastest-ever stage of Tirreno-Adriatico with an average speed of over 47kph.

Jonas Vingegaard took the overall classification by a margin of 1:24 over his nearest competitor, with Juan Ayuso in second and Jai Hindley rounding out the GC podium, after the Dane dominated the race's hardest stages.