Neo-pro sprinter Caleb Ewan has sprinted to his fourth stage win on the seventh day of racing at the Tour de Korea today.

Bonus seconds will see the 20-year-old enter the short 65km final stage in Seoul tomorrow with an eight second advantage from Patrick Bevin (Avanti Racing Team) who finished second to Ewan again today.

The stage two, three and five winner also holds the best young rider’s white jersey and green point’s jersey.

Ewan credited a textbook lead out and favourable finish for the comfortable victory in front of his parents, who surprised him with a trip to Korea to watch the final stages.

“Today we stuck together, the lead out was pretty perfect and the finish suited me out of a corner with 300m to go,” Ewan said. “We also got a bit of help from Drapac and Avanti which was good and that saved Leigh Howard,Mitch Docker, Adam Blythe and I for the end.

“Leigh did a good job of keeping us near the front and then when he had to go, he still had a lot of gas left. He took us from four kilometres to one-kilometre to go and that let Mitch and Adam do their thing.

“I think when we nail the lead out, there is no one that can really beat us so it was good to get it right today.”

After a frantic first hour full of attacks, a move of four riders was finally deemed suitable to form the day’s breakaway.

They were allowed up to five and a half minutes advantage before the reaction came to reduce the gap.

After the error of an early catch and subsequent hectic finish on yesterday’s stage, ORICA-GreenEDGE controlled the chase to bring the race back together in the final six kilometres and force the desired bunch sprint.

“Michael Hepburn and Jens Mouris did a great job for us to control the race for a bunch kick and the guys stayed together the whole final really well today, regardless of what other teams were doing, which made a huge difference,” sport director David McPartland said. 

Despite not a priority going into the race, McPartland said the team will now allow themselves to look at the overall victory and will work to protect it tomorrow.

“It hasn’t been a goal of ours all week, we have been prioritising things to go for stages,” he said. “In the final it’ll be the same deal, we will set up Caleb again for the win.

“The only difference tomorrow is that there are intermediate bonus seconds on offer throughout the stage so we will be on the alert for those and it’s pretty obvious now that we will ride to protect the general classification.”