A short and intense stage saw the peloton take on a 114 kilometre route from Biograd na Moru to Novalja, where some short climbs and windy conditions made for a nervous day. Team dsm-firmenich PostNL rode well throughout and kept tabs on things, always being present towards the fore when the wind blew. However, nothing materialised and it looked set to be a normal sprint stage.
Over the last kicker the team followed the moves well with Oscar Onley, Sean Flynn and Warren Barguil before turning their attention to setting up a run at the intermediate sprint, where Pavel Bittner and Tobias Lund Andresen grabbed some bonus seconds. Controlling the final three kilometres, things became a bit chaotic and disjointed on the run-in so the team were unable to execute the same great lead-out in the finale, with Bittner ultimately going on to take sixth place at the line.
Sprint road captain Flynn said: “Today was a short but nervous stage, but we rode well as a team and were always in control of the situation and represented in the front when the strong winds were causing stress. In the final Oscar, Warren and myself were able to make it into a small group over the last kicker but this came back and we refocused to set up Pavel for the last intermediate sprint which we did really well taking some valuable bonus seconds. Then we tried to repeat the intermediate point in the final sprint to the line. It didn’t quite work out but definitely was an improvement on yesterday so we hope to continue in that way tomorrow.”