Due to crash on the last stage of Tour of Turkey, Davide Rebellin was forced to abandon the race and didn’t stand on the podium of the general classification.

The final stage of Tour of Turkey was held in Istanbul on a relatively flat route. There was a short hill on the circuit around the Turkish capital, but it was not supposed to cause troubles for the sprinters. A four man group – with Boris Vallée (Lotto-Soudal), Kenny De Ketele (Topsport Vlaanderen – Baloise), Eduard Michael Grosu (Nippo – Vini Fantini) and Carlos Quinteros (Team Colombia) – launched the early attack and for most part of the race the gap stayed at 1:40.

Davide Rebellin, who was 2nd in GC 21 seconds behind Kristijan Durasek (Lampre-Merida), was riding at the head of the bunch. The entire CCC Sprandi Polkowice team was around him, but it didn’t prevent the Italian from crashing. With 28km to go, a crossed the road and hit Stefan Schumacher’s wheel. He hit the brakes and fell. Rebellin was not able to pass him and crashed into the German. Rebellin suffered a dislocated shoulder injury and couldn’t continue. He got on the ambulance and went to the hospital for a further check up.

Rebellin’s teammates waited for him, in case the injury was not so serious and wanted to catch up to the bunch. Because of that, they lost the contact with the group and were not able to come back. Only Tomasz Kiendyś and Adrian Honkisz found their way back to the peloton and the other riders in orange decided to stop.

The finale in Istanbul was twisting and tricky. Lluís Mas used that to his advantage and attacked the sprinters’ teams. He managed to hold them off and claimed the victory, besting 3-time stage winner Mark Cavendish.

Durasek crossed the line as the overall winner. Eduardo Sepulveda (Bretagne – Séché Environnement) took over Rebellin’s 2nd place and Jay McCarthy (Tinkoff – Saxo) rounded out the GC podium. Due to six CCC Sprandi Polkowice riders abandoning (earlier Łukasz Owsian and Nikolay Mihaylov didn’t start stage 7 after making the Giro d’Italia roster), Adrian Honkisz was the highest ranked rider in the general classification (50th place).