On the final day of the 2024 Tour of Britain, as the rain began to fall in Felixstowe, Bahrain’s young Slovenian Matevž Govekar outsprinted his rivals to take a precious 3rd career professional win. The joy and relief was plain to see on the face of the ecstatic 24 year old, as the rest of the team joined him in celebration on the East Anglian seafront. 

“It was a pretty fast day,” says Govekar, “busy from the start with many attacks. I was feeling really good and we were racing in front all day. Especially at the finish when it was clear there would be a sprint, the guys stayed around me & helped me. They did such a good job and I’m just happy I could finish it off.” 

Bahrain had been pulling the peloton as they have done every day, and Sports Director Roman Kreuziger acknowledged the tremendous work of all six riders on the roster for our debut Tour of Britain.

“Matevž has been up there on every sprint, but has hesitated in the finales. Today the team did a perfect lead out and he finished it off. I’m super happy with how the guys worked all week; we made some mistakes on stage 2, but Edoardo Zambanini finished top ten on GC, the guys are healthy and ready for the next races, and we have a stage win.” 

The team has been close on many occasions over the past months, and have come up just short. But today everything fell into place perfectly for an 11th victory of 2024, as Kreuziger reflected after the stage:

“We haven’t won since the Tour of Slovenia which is almost three months, so hopefully this will be the impetus we need to have a successful end to the season. We told Matevž yesterday that this was going to be a fast finish and that if he waited he’d get boxed in. Today was a very fast average speed all day, and with the rain coming we were fortunate to be able to do the last corners on dry roads. We are all super happy for him and the team that it worked out so well.” 

Matevž put his foot on the pedal with more than 300m to go, which would usually be seen as ‘going too early’, but the conditions and the result are proof that it was the right decision …

“I have really built up my confidence,” he said, “especially this week because I’ve been fighting well for position in the closing kilometres and I’ve had good legs. Yesterday I was close again but just waited a little bit too long, so today I decided I was just going to go for it. I was already pushing for the right spot with 300m to go and went all out to the line. I knew that with the tailwind I had a decent chance if I started my sprint early, so that’s what I did. We all stuck to the plan and did our jobs – this was really a team effort. “It’s the perfect way to finish a great week of racing,” concluded Govekar. “We’ve always been one of the teams in the front animating and controlling the race. A few times we had already been really close so I think this win is actually the culmination of what we’ve done all week. It’s no wonder everyone was super happy to finish on such a high.”