Twenty-four hours, and the result flips
Beaten in Skegness on Thursday, Olav Kooij came back and beat the same man on Friday. The Dutchman took stage three of the Tour of Britain in Beverley, holding off Tim Merlier in a sprint that had been building since Wednesday.
Merlier arrived at this race with 10 wins already this season and remains one of the quickest finishers in the bunch. On this occasion the Soudal Quick-Step rider simply could not find the gap.
Lewis Askey stays in the green leader’s jersey. The NSN rider opened his week by winning stage one in Lincoln, on roads he knows, and the bonus seconds scattered around the intermediate sprints have not been enough to dislodge him.
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A biathlon gold medallist is learning to sprint
Emilien Jacquelin drew praise in the French press for his work in the closing kilometres on Friday. That sentence would have made no sense a year ago. The Olympic biathlon champion joined Decathlon CMA CGM as a trainee in the spring and has been converting to the road ever since.
He raced his first professional events in August. Ninety-third on stage one in Lincoln. A ProSeries race, inside a squad organised around a sprinter, is about as steep a classroom as the sport offers.
Jacquelin, 31, is weighing up skipping the 2026-2027 biathlon World Cup to commit fully to cycling. Nothing has been confirmed.
Two days left and seconds between them
The Tour of Britain wraps up on Sunday. Two stages to go, and among the fast men the general classification is a matter of a handful of seconds.
Askey has to survive the sprinters and the teams driving them. Kooij and Merlier each go into the weekend with a stage win to protect and every reason to take another one off each other.
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