CRO Race: Tobias Svarre wins overall as Davide Donati claims final stage victory in sprint

Tobias Svarre capped off a perfect six days of racing at the CRO Race for Uno-X Mobility, winning the general classification and adding to the team’s two stage victories by safely finishing the final stage in Zagreb.

Rising Italian sprinter Davide Donati (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe Rookies) won stage 6 from the bunch sprint, benefitting from Paul Magnier (Soudal-QuickStep) hitting the front way too early. The Frenchman finished third, with Lorenzo De Longhi (Campana- Imballagi-Morbiato-Trentino) also coming around him before the line arrived to finish second.

Svarre went into the final stage with a narrow four-second lead over Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), which he gained from his stage 3 victory, and held by finishing 35th in the bunch. Pre-race favourite Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) took third on GC, eight seconds back on the Dane.

A five-rider breakaway led for most of the final 100km on Sunday, with Andrea Bessega (Lidl-Trek Future Racing), Valentin Ferron (Cofidis), Jon Agirre (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Dario Giuliano (Polti VisitMalta), and Manuele Tarozzi (Bardiani CSF 7 Saber) lasting out in front until the final 10km.

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It was from there that Soudal-QuickStep tried to take control of the flat stage for Magnier, but the likes of Modern Adventure and then Red Bull were able to overhaul them before the final 2km.

Without the same star lead-out as he had on stage 5, Magnier was forced to freestyle in the final kilometre, where he ended up in the wind too soon and had to go long. Unable to get out of the saddle as he tried to use brute force for back-to-back wins, Donati was sat in his wheel and pounced, winning convincingly at the line.

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