Bagatin Survives From The Break For Maiden Pro Win On Feslikan Summit As Berwick Drops Sosa To Take Tour Of Turkey Race Lead — Tour Of Türkiye 2026 Stage 6 Result
The brutal queen stage of the 2026 Presidential Cycling Tour of Türkiye delivered the most dramatic GC reset of the spring stage-race calendar, as 23-year-old Italian Christian Bagatin of MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort survived from a 14-rider breakaway to deliver the ride of his career on the 21.4km Feslikan summit finish, while Australian Sebastian Berwick of Caja Rural-Seguros RGA dropped Ivan Ramiro Sosa on the upper slopes to seize the race leader's jersey ahead of the closing week.
The stage was shaped by a large early move that built an advantage of more than six minutes heading towards the decisive climb. With the GC contenders content to let the breakaway go, Bagatin proved the strongest of the 14-man group, launching his attack as the gradient bit on the lower slopes of Feslikan and quickly distancing the rest of the move. The Italian, who turned professional in 2023 and had not previously stood on a WorldTour-level podium, held a steady tempo through the closing 18km of the climb to take a commanding solo victory and his first professional win.
Behind, the GC group exploded inside the closing 10km. Berwick, riding for the Spanish ProTeam, accelerated on a 9% ramp inside the closing 6km of the climb and found that only Sosa — the Colombian who had carried the leader's jersey into the stage — could initially follow. The Caja Rural rider then opened a second acceleration with 3.8km to climb, dropping Sosa for good and setting the gap that handed him both the stage podium and the overall lead. Frenchman Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies) closed the GC chase to take third on the day at 1:14 down on Bagatin.
The Feslikan climb had been the most anticipated parcours pivot of the eight-day Turkish stage race. Averaging 5.4% over its full length but holding ramps of 11% in its closing 4km, the climb has now produced its second consecutive winner from the early breakaway, confirming the parcours profile that holds the GC book hostage to the lower-category riders prepared to commit to a 200km solo brief. Bagatin's winning margin over Berwick, who took the stage runner-up spot 38 seconds back, marks the second-largest stage-winning gap on Feslikan since the climb was first introduced to the route in 2019.
Berwick now leads the General Classification by 24 seconds over Sosa, with Jegat sitting third at 1:08 ahead of the closing-week Antalya circuits. The race continues with the rolling stage 7 from Antalya to Antalya, where defending champion Davide Ballerini's Lidl-Trek sprint train will look to control the bunch through the technical urban finale. The closing stage 8 Istanbul circuit holds the final processional ride into the closing weekend.
For Bagatin, the Feslikan win delivers the breakthrough result of a career that had previously stalled at Continental-level podiums. The Italian becomes the first MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort rider to win a UCI ProSeries stage at this level, and the closing minutes of his solo effort — punctuated by a series of out-of-the-saddle accelerations as the rest of the breakaway disintegrated behind him — have already drawn comparison to the Diego Ulissi 2014 Trabzon brief that confirmed the parcours archetype on which Turkish queen stages are now built.
The Tour of Türkiye book now holds Berwick 11/8 the outright closing-week leader's jersey, Sosa 5/2 the closing-podium pivot, with the closing 6.4km Antalya finishing sprint window now compressed onto a Ballerini-Mareczko twin-card that has held through the closing four refreshes. The closing week opens at 11:00 local in Antalya, with Bagatin's Feslikan ride confirmed as the standout one-day breakaway brief of the 2026 spring stage-race calendar.