"Dropped At Ten Kilometres To Go, Chased Back, And Won The Sprint Anyway" — Tom Crabbe Doubles Up On Tour Of Türkiye Stage 2 In Marmaris
Twenty-four hours after his bunch-sprint win in Selçuk, the 20-year-old Belgian sprinter Tom Crabbe doubled his Presidential Cycling Tour of Türkiye account on Monday afternoon with a second consecutive stage victory in Marmaris — but only after surviving a brutal closing-kilometre Aegean climb that initially saw him dropped from the front group with ten kilometres to ride. The Flanders-Baloise rider clawed back, latched on, and out-sprinted the regrouped peloton with a textbook 200-metre kick that brought him level with the all-time best sprint streak of any 2.Pro debutant in the modern era.
The day's parcours was a 178-kilometre rolling stage from Aydın to Marmaris, with three category-3 ascents including a stinging Cat-3 climb of the Sarıgerme ridge ten kilometres from the line. The peloton's pure sprinters — including Trinity Racing's Joel Suter, Caja Rural's Iván Cobo and Decathlon-CMA CGM's Cees Bol — were already off the back when the front group of fifty crested the climb, and Crabbe himself, briefly distanced on the steepest 9% pitch, was chasing inside the final eight kilometres with two team-mates and the assistance of a Tudor Pro Cycling counter-attack neutralisation that brought him back into the fold three kilometres from the finish.
From there, Flanders-Baloise sprint coach Sven Vanthourenhout's lead-out plan executed with surgical precision: Cédric Beullens and Tom Stinckens handed Crabbe to the front of the bunch with 800 metres to go; the young Belgian held position behind Q36.5 Pro Cycling's lead-out train; and at 200 metres, with a small gap opening on the right of the road, he opened the throttle and rode away. Sente Sentjens (Bingoal Wallonie-Bruxelles) finished second, half a wheel back, with Spaniard César Macías (Caja Rural) completing the podium. Sunday's runner-up Simon Dehairs faded to seventh after losing the wheel of Crabbe's lead-out train inside the final kilometre.
"Two days, two wins, and the second one was harder than the first," Crabbe said on the Marmaris podium, holding the leader's turquoise jersey for the second consecutive evening. "I was off the back on the climb, I thought it was finished. The team brought me back. Without Cédric and Tom, this is fifth or sixth at best." The 20-year-old's two-stage Türkiye haul takes his 2026 win count to four — Antalya stages 2 and 3 in February, the GP Industria & Artigianato di Larciano in March, and now back-to-back Türkiye openers — putting him alongside Olav Kooij and Tobias Lund Andresen as the only riders with four 2026 victories before May.
The GC picture remains broadly unchanged. Crabbe leads by 14 seconds over Sentjens (with the bonification seconds for the stage win and the second-place sprint), with the rest of the GC favourites — Tudor's Mauri Vansevenant, INEOS Grenadiers' Eddie Dunbar, and Bahrain Victorious's veteran climber Damiano Caruso — sitting inside the same minute. The race's first proper test for the GC riders comes Wednesday with Stage 4 to the Termessos summit finish, a 14.2-kilometre climb at 6.4% average gradient that has historically separated the GC top ten by 90 seconds and that Vansevenant has raced once before, finishing fifth in 2024.
For Tuesday's Stage 3 — a 162-kilometre flat run from Marmaris to Fethiye — Crabbe is now odds-on for a third consecutive win, with the Türkiye organiser pricing him at 8/11 in the official sponsor-side board. Bol, Suter and Lotto-Intermarché's Iván García Cortina are the next-shortest sprint prices on what is the flattest stage of the week. The Türkiye GC closes Sunday 3 May with the 14.6km Sultanahmet ITT through Istanbul; Crabbe's leader's jersey, on a course like Wednesday's, is unlikely to last beyond Antalya — but the 20-year-old's two-day haul has, on Monday evening in Marmaris, eclipsed everything any Belgian sprinter under the age of 22 has done at this race since Tom Boonen's 2002 debut.
Flanders-Baloise team manager Hendrik Redant, asked on the team bus whether Crabbe would now ride the full GC week, replied that "the plan is to take the next sprint, then take Wednesday's mountain stage as it comes." The 20-year-old's contract negotiations — with Decathlon-CMA CGM and Lotto-Intermarché both reportedly active — are now, after two days in Türkiye, a market-priced event. Whatever the rider's next destination, his 2026 spring is producing the kind of record that gets its bidder a number to start with.