Van Aert attacked three times in the final 30 kilometers on the roads into the historic city, the last of which ended when a reduced peloton caught him within 850 meters of the finish line by Gloucester Docks.

Tiller benefited from a good lead-out from team-mate Tobias Johannessen to win from the 13-man group who came into the finish together.

Race Highlights

An action-packed start to the day saw Mark Donovan (Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team) and Ben Turner (Ineos Grenadiers) tackle the first ascent of the stage. From there, the duo was joined by Ryan Christensen (Bolton Equities Black Spoke), Liam Johnston (Trinity Racing) and Abram Stockman (TDT-Unibet Cycling Team).

Uno-X Pro Cycling initially set the pace at the front of the field, but as the breakaway gained more time, Jumbo-Visma moved forward with their overall race leader, van Aert, and with some help from Movistar.

As the race passed through the intermediate sprint in Dursley with 29km to go, the time gap dropped to under one minute, with Donovan picking up the points in Dursey and the points over Crawley Hill.

The splintered peloton eventually merged back together, but there were only roughly 25 riders left in the main field in pursuit of the breakaway riders.

Van Aert saw his opportunity to surge over the uncategorised ascent with 11km to go, later bridging to Donovan and Turner who were able to hang on to the Belgian rider’s as Stephen William (Israel-Premier Tech) bridged across to form a new group of four.

A chase behind the quartet included Danny van Poppel and Nils Politt (Bora-Hansgrohe, Gregor Mühlberger and Gonzalo Serrano (Movistar Team), Damien Howson (Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team), and Zeb Kyffin (Saint Piran).  However, Uno X Pro Cycling dragged the chase group back into the fold with 5km to the finish.

Sensing the gap closing down on the breakaway, Van Aert attacked from the breakaway and pulled away with 3km to go. He built his lead out to five seconds, but as Uno X and Bora-Hansgrohe pulled a reduced field into the last kilometre, Van Aert’s gap was cut to just three seconds, and he was caught inside 600 meters to go.