Pavel Sivakov has captured the biggest victory of his career to date at the Tour de Pologne after he and his Team Ineos squad played a hugely successful defensive game on the final stage. Second on stage 6 and second overall prior to Friday`s short-but-intense trek through the foothills of Poland`s Tatras mountains, Sivakov inherited the title of virtual race leader when yellow jersey holder Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) faded badly mid-stage and was dropped. Sivakov`s rivals - and with another 16 riders at 61 seconds or less on GC - tried hard, if sporadically, to test the young Russian. But they found Team Ineos in general and Sivakov and teammate Tao Geoghegan Hart in particular more than up to the task of defending Sivakov`s newly assumed provisional race lead.ADVERTISEMENT Although the stage win was long gone to Matej Mohoric (Bahrain-Merida), Sivakov rode across the finish line in Bukowina with one arm raised in victory. Whilst Geoghegan Hart yelled Sivakov his congratulations as they rolled through the finish area, Sivakov himself was also visibly content at having held off rivals like Jai Hindley (Team Sunweb) by a margin of just two seconds, with Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates) third, 12 seconds back. `First Jumbo-Visma controlled things, then we kept me and Tao in a good position all day. I think Tao was fantastic. He`s in really amazing shape,` Sivakov told reporters. `Maybe he was stronger than me, but tactics played out the way they did yesterday [on stage 6]. I`m really happy, because it`s my biggest win so far.` Sivakov`s GC options were certainly the best of the Team Ineos riders pre-stage, given he was second overall by just four seconds and had only been narrowly defeated by Vingegaard on the previous day - one so tough several riders, including Sivakov, said parts of it had been the hardest-toughest race of their careers.
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