Today’s stage 7 of Tirreno-Adriatico 2023 was the final stage of the legendary race of the two seas. The race started on the west coast on Monday and today concluded with a 154-kilometer ride on the roads near San Benedetto del Tronto on the east coast.

The route of the final leg of the race featured both mountains and flat sections. The mountain sections, however, were located early in the stage, offering hope to the sprinters in the professional cycling peloton. They climbs were also of short, but steep nature with the most extensive uphill challenge being Cossignano – a 2.6-kilometer climb of an 8.6 percent average incline and sporting steep sections of up to 13.8 percent.

Four kilometers after the start in San Benedetto del Tronto, a seven-man group of breakaway hopefuls attacked from the peloton. Riders included AG2R-Citroen’s Nans Peters, who set out to try his luck on his birthday, Mikkel Frølich Honore (EF Education-EasyPost), Bruno Armirail (Groupama-FDJ), TotalEnergies’ Valentin Ferron, Tudor Pro Cycling Team’s Arthur Kluckers, Lorenzo Fortunato (Eolo-Kometa), and Samuele Zoccarato (Green Project-Bardiani CSF-Faizane). The group was later joined by 22-year-old Henri Vandenabeele, who set out to prove his worth and secure some success for his DSM team.

The breakaway group enjoyed a long stint at the front of the race, but with sprinter teams eager to try their luck in the final opportunity of this year’s Tirreno-Adriatico, they were reeled in by the furiously chasing peloton three kilometers from the stage end.

Jasper Philipsen proved the strongest man on the day as he won the sprint across the finish line for his Alpecin-Deceuninck team. Team Jayco-Alula’s Dylan Groenewegen sprinted to a second-place finish, while Alberto Dainese completed the top three for Team DSM.

"I don’t know if I’m currently the world’s best sprinter. We’ll have to wait for the Tour de France for me to be able to say that. After the sprints here at Tirreno-Adriatico, I’ll ask for Mathieu van der Poel to be my lead-out man in the sprints more often,” stage winner Philipsen told Roadcycling.com.  

When asked about his ambitions in Milano-Sanremo 2023 this coming Saturday, Philipsen said “I would like our next race goal, Milan-Sanremo, to be a tight finish with a big group of riders, but it won’t be an easy job considering the high number of quality participants. I’ll remain in Italy to ride the Poggio climb three or four times on Wednesday to prepare. I’m a rider who normally gets stronger day after day, so this stage race boosted my confidence.”

Primoz Roglic won the general classification and was crowned King of the Two Seas after remarkably having won no less than three stages of this year’s race. UAE Team Emirates’ Joao Almeida finished second, 18 seconds behind the winner, while Tao Geoghegan Hart took third for his Ineos-Grenadiers team by finishing 23 seconds behind the race champion.

"It feels great for me to be back from injury and ride the way we did. It’s been an amazing week with Wout van Aert and my other teammates,” Tirreno-Adriatico Champion Roglic explained to Roadcycling.com.

“I enjoyed this comeback a lot. It was super hard from the time trial onwards. I rode it flat out and then it was a question of getting back into the rhythm of road bicycle racing. I will use the same approach at the 2023 Giro d’Italia and I just want to have fun on my bike.”

“Now that I’ll have two trident trophies at home, my trophies of Tirreno-Adriatico might become tools for my sons to fight,” Roglic concluded jokingly.

Stay tuned to Roadcycling.com for more coverage from the 2023 pro cycling season.