News: Max Stedman wins in Turkey

Max Stedman of Canyon DHB had his biggest win today in the Tour of Antalya on Sunday after telling VeloUK last week his goal in 2020 was to win a UCI race or stage race – it didn’t take long for Max to win the latter.

News: Max Stedman wins in Turkey

Images: Steve Thomas | Brian Black Hodes

The race was in Turkey, a four stage, UCI 2.1 ranked event and Max’s winning margin of one second meant that his team were crucial in making sure the leader’s jersey stayed in the team. The race began with a sprinters stage where the team finished in the big bunch and then on the second stage, with splits in the race seeing the start of the GC race begin, Max along with teammate Dan Pearson and fellow Brit Ben Tulett (former World Junior cyclocross Champion twice over) stayed at the front to go into the crucial stage 3 without having lost any time.

The stage 3 summit finish was something Max had his eye on and sure enough, his legs matched his ambitions and he crossed the line in third place to take the leader’s jersey with Ben Tulett in 5th place for his team, Alpecin-Fenix. Max has spent the week before doing some specific efforts to match the demands of this stage (read the interview with Max here) and with just the one mountain finish, had made the most of his good form he had from Challenge Mallorca at the start of February following a training camp.

Having got the jersey, there was only one stage to get through and despite being a sprinter’s stage, there were bonus seconds on offer for an intermedite sprint. Kenneth Van Rooy was the danger man and he was just two seconds down on Max at the start of the stage. Thankfully for Max, he had a fast teammate in Andy Tennant who took the two seconds in the sprint behind Martin Toft Madsen (3 second bonus) leaving just one second for Van Rooy. Max now led by a second.

The Canyon DHB team and the teams after the sprint win kept the race together and whilst there were bonuses on offer for the stage, it was unlikely the climbers who were Stedman’s rivals for the overall victory, were going to win them. And so it was that the race finished in a bunch kick and the over all win was sealed for Stedman and his team.

Afterwards Max said “We knew some things were out of our control when we were going into the stage. The intermediate sprint was more important to us as we didn’t want to lose leadership there. After we succeeded there (through Andy Tennant), it was down to the sprint. It was our most important victory both for myself and for my team. The team worked very well and luck was with us”.

It was a race that had mixed weather but back on the first day, the race location was obviously one that Max liked the looked of. “The stage on the first day was beautiful. We were at the beach, saw the mountains and I saw how beautiful it was there at that moment”. No doubt looking back at the race, it will be a beautiful victory as well where his team stayed strong with such a slender lead to hold on to.