Wout van Aert rounds out Jumbo domination

Jumbo-Visma take home Tour of Britain title but are made to work for it in the mountains of South Wales, reports Tom Thewlis

- Tom Thewlis

They may have won the first five stages at a canter, but in the end Jumbo-Visma's Wout van Aert was made to work for the Tour of Britain's overall title. The Belgian eventually secured the win at the end of a gruelling final stage in South Wales.

Van Aert was confirmed as the overall champion with just three seconds in hand after he took the runner-up spot behind stage eight victor Carlos Rodríguez of the Ineos Grenadiers squad on Sunday afternoon.

"It was a super-tough stage," van Aert said afterwards. "With the course this year, the last weekend was really decisive, and everybody went all in for that general classification.

"Today the climbs were a bit longer, which is tricky for me, especially comparing me with riders like Rodríguez and [Stevie] Williams, who are more than 20kg lighter, I think, so at some points I really had to stay calm, trust in my team-mates and in the final two laps I really had to fight for the GC and let the stage win go away.

"I had a really hard time," he added. "I didn't think it was possible to take the general classification. We really had to think a lot in that final but I managed to do it."

Rodríguez had attacked in the rain towards the summit of the Bryn Du climb, the first of several tough uphill tests faced by the riders after leaving Margam Country Park on Sunday morning.

The Spaniard started the day 39 seconds down on van Aert and launched his move along with Great Britain's Stevie Williams - after being teed up by his team-mates Luke Rowe, Ben Turner and Connor Swift who had all set a high pace from the base of the climb.