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Team Sky is on a WorldTour stage race roll

Thomas and Kwiatkowski with two 2018 titles apiece

08-08-2018 Tour De Pologne; Tappa 05 Kopalnia Soli Wieliczka - Bielsko Biala; 2018, Team Sky; Kwiatkowski, Michal; Bielsko Biala;

Michal Kwiatkowski (Poland/Sky) took the first post-Tour de France WorldTour stage race on Friday, wrapping up his home Tour of Poland by holding off Simon Yates (Great Britain/Mitchelton-Scott). It gave Kwiatkowski his second WorldTour stage race title of the season, after March’s Tirreno-Adriatico, and Sky the fifth win out of the last six WorldTour stage races. Richie Porte’s Tour de Suisse triumph is the only non-Sky stage race winner since Chris Froome’s Giro d’Italia victory.

Geraint Thomas has Sky’s most WorldTour points after his first Tour de France title, the Critérium du Dauphiné win and third in the Tirreno-Adriatico. Thomas is only 150-points behind WorldTour individual winner Peter Sagan.

Thomas’ two WorldTour stage race triumphs has him right behind Sagan in the individual standings. Photo: Sirotti

Froome is in third place on the individual list with the Giro victory and third in the Tour de France.

Sky’s new Colombian sensation Egan Bernal’s Tour de California title and runner-up in Tour de Romandie has him sitting in 17th in the individual rankings. His crash in the Ciclista San Sebastian saw him suffer facial fractures; Bernal’s Vuelta a España participation is in jeopardy.

Egan Bernal would be even higher in the WorldTour rankings if he hadn’t crashed out of Volta a Catalunya on the last stage while sitting second. Photo: Sirotti

Curiously, Kwiatkowski’s two WorldTour victories haven’t lifted him into the top-25.

Still, even with this great stage race record (six wins out of 13 contests), Sky isn’t leading the team competition, as Quick Step’s Wolf Pack has been even more dominant in one-day events. French swashbuckler Julian Alaphilippe leads the way, having rolled up the seventh most individual points with wins in La Flèche Wallonne and San Sebastian. Italian Elia Viviani is right behind him in eighth with runner-up spots in three races. Niki Terpstra is 13th, the Dutchman having earned the E3 Harelbeke and Tour of Flanders titles.

The next WorldTour stage race is the BinckBank Tour in Belgium and the Netherlands, August 13 to 19, and the next one-day contest is the EuroEyes Cyclassics, of which Viviani is the current champion.