Sean Flynn sprints to 3rd after fast and hilly finale at Tour of Oman

Following on from a podium result on the opening stage in the sprint with Pavel Bittner, Team Picnic PostNL once again set out with the goal of going for the stage result and keeping GC finishers Warren Barguil and Kevin Vermaerke safe throughout the day. It was a steady start to racing with a break going clear early on but halfway into the stage attacks peppered the front of the peloton and counter attacking groups bridged to those ahead. The pace then went out of the peloton for a bit and the break increased their advantage once more.

Coming into the main climbs in the closing 30 kilometres, Team Picnic PostNL showed some good teamwork and positioned Barguil, Vermaerke and Sean Flynn. Due to the large gap for the break, a strong tempo was set at the head of the bunch and the group began to thin down as they took on the final ascent. Barguil, Flynn and Vermaerke all made it over within the peloton and looked to set things up for the sprint but lone-leader Vervaeke just held on for the win. Flynn showed a good turn of speed to take a fine third place on the day from the sprint in the peloton; his first Pro level podium. Unfortunately, a touch of wheels in front of him saw Vermaerke crash in the finale but thankfully he was able to finish the stage okay.

Flynn expressed: “I’m happy to come away with a third place on the stage after good work from the whole team to put me, Kevin and Warren in position for the final climbs. I was a bit worried coming into the final after I had a flat tyre before the longest climb of the stage but I stayed calm and trusted the team and hard work I’ve put in over the winter to pull me through it. In the final, I learnt the lessons from Muscat classic on Friday and managed to put together a decent finish today.”

Team Picnic PostNL coach Phil West added: “It was a pretty strange day actually. We set out to go for the stage result, and again like in Muscat Classic, we had a few options on a difficult finish like this where it could come to a select group sprint. The boys did a really good job. A break was away and some teams were then keen to attack all of the time, and in the end the peloton let groups of ones and two go, and that’s how they won the stage. The teamwork from the guys was really good and we had Sean, Warren and Kevin there in the final. The lone leader just managed to hold on at the finish and Sean did a really good sprint to get third on the day. Kevin unfortunately went down in the final but thankfully he seems okay on first inspection with only some scrapes and bruises, but we will see how he gets tomorrow. Overall though, the teamwork has been on a really high level and we’re still in the game on the GC, so we can be happy with how things went.”