After five days of racing at the Tour of Slovenia, Team Bahrain Victorious took a sprint stage with Phil Bauhaus, and the Queen stage with Pello Bilbao, who also finished second on GC. Four of the seven riders here will go to the Tour de France, and the week showed the strength of the Bahrain Victorious line-up in July.

Pello Bilbao was pleased with how the team performed this week: »In the end, we were all expecting maybe to got for the victory today. I think sometimes we need to be happy also and enjoy our achievements. We did great here, we had two stage wins. With Phil and me it is always a combination of the races. Every day we were fighting for the victory. Even today in the last moment we believed that we would go for the GC. It has been a good step towards the Tour de France. I am happy to be here in Slovenia. Now I want to come back for sure.«

Sports Director Borut Božič said after the race: “We tried to turn the last stage in our favour but unfortunately, we were just short. The boys did their best today to advance to first place in the general classification. We also had victory in mind, because victory in Novi Mesto is always very important to us. But the conclusion was that we had to settle for second place, which is a great result because we wanted it at the beginning. I would rate the entire race as very good. We had 4 guys here who are going to the Tour. They are in good condition, which is in the interest of all of us. But they were all very professional, they did their job as it should. I am very satisfied.”