A long hilly stage (209km) features a steep hilltop finish on "Sonntagberg" and is likely to offer those, who aim for the GC, chances to attack.
Race-leader Intxausti looked strong yesterday, where he countered several moves by some of his most dangerous opponents here. Will he keep controlling the race today?
Two escapees try their luck with a (probably) very long attempt: Schrangl (7th in KoM) and Possoni. With three mountain sprints on the menu today, it's one clear goal for Schrangl here.
The Austrian took out the first sprint, but there's a 9-men-group catching up to the duo about 72km before finish:
Soler (GC + 5.00 as 23rd) Niemiec Delage Meintjes Kononenko Sano (GC + 5.17) Moyano Silva Anthony
So a quite strong escaping group and some more competition for Schrangl and his mission to go for the polka dot. The peloton looks like it won't take things too easy as well, keeping the group's gap at 2 minutes with 44km remaining and the last KoM-sprint putting Schrangl indeed in the leading position:
KoM-competition Schrangl 36 Pirazzi 31 Kimeli 30
The most notable news happen back in the bunch though: Nepomnyachsniy (GC's 9th) crashes 58km before finish! He quickly is back on the bike and doesn't look he's injured.
Good news for the Kazakh, that his team works well to bring him back to the peloton just 10km later. Might have just been a moment of shock, but we will see later.
11km to go and the peloton kept pacing to pull the 11-men-breakaway back! The race settles down now as there's no team showing any interest in keeping the pace up..
..which of course attracts some riders to go for a late attack here:
Delage Moyano Sano go again, followed by
Silva Shushemoin Eibegger!
So some names, who tried before, and therefore also no real GC-threat. Which may be the reason for the peloton sitting up for a few minutes, allowing the attacking riders to open up a 1'30"-gap quickly!
And now for the hilltop finish: 3.6km to go and as soon as the leading group enters the 8%-slopes, Eibegger and Sushemoin go for another attack!
In the meantime, also Ndbri attacked the peloton, which is already down by more than 2 minutes! The stage-win is likely to go to this escaping group..
Which won't mean, that the GC-contenders wouldn't try to put pressure on Intxausti. Two groups attack the peloton at the same point, where Eibegger attacked the leading group:
Augustyn Abal Marquez went as first!
Torres Pedraza Nazaret Nepomnyachsniy Zeits Ardila Cano Ji follow a few moments later!
Definitely a lot of pressure for Intxausti now, with all those five riders from 2nd to 6th in GC on the move here!
And the Spaniard doesn't exactly look in best shape/position early into this climb: Intxausti is still in between the peloton with some more riders trying to jump behind group Abal/Marquez!
Nerz, Dyachenko, Topchanyuk and Gerdemann were next in line to go clear. What's happening to Intxausti here? He's already down by more than a minute on Abal/Marquez!
Let's take a look back to the very front though, where the stage-win will go to either Eibegger or Sushemoin, who hold off Delage and the remaining escapees by quite a margin.. Eibegger kicking off the sprint from the leading position..
..and no chance to prevent Shushemoin from taking this stage! Local hero Eibegger has to settle for 2nd place, losing 8" eventually. Delage completes the podium already 44" down on the winner.
Most of those late escapees manage to hold off the first group(s) of favorites, so Sano, Moyano and also Ndbri go for some nice results today.
But let's focus on the GC-fight now. And it will become interesting today, as there's quite a selection on this short, but steep climb here!
Augustyn with strong legs today, it seems..
at 0.16 Marquez and Nepomnyachsniy
at 0.35 Abal
at 0.45 Nazaret
at 0.59 Pedraza and Ardila Cano
at 1.09 Zeits
Marquez (GC + 0.13 on Intxausti) as the most promising name to take over the race-lead from a still struggling GC-leader! Abal (+ 0.09) can't really follow, but is of course still fighting to at least limit his losses on Marquez..
..and where's Intxausti? He at least launched his move to avoid a total disaster, accompanied by Rohregger.. but looking at the gap to those riders, who attacked earlier.. well, it's huge:
Intxausti enters his final 1.5km with almost two minutes of disadvantage on Augustyn/Marquez and also Abal! The Spaniard will definitely lose his yellow here, with also weaker climbers like Torres still about 45" ahead here!
+ 1'59" on the stage-winner, Augustyn went for a nice 7th place ahead of Silva and all GC-favorites! So he's likely to move into the Top-10 at least..
+ 2'18" Marquez and Nepomnyachsniy! There's quite a gap on group Abal..
+ 2'50" Abal, Zeits, Nazaret and Pedraza! So Marquez with a huge result here!
+ 3'17" Cano
+ 3'33" Ji, Dyachenko and Gerdemann
+ 3'56" Nerz and Topchanyuk
Intxausti will lose big time on Marquez/Abal, which is definitely surprising. Was it just a bad daily form or horrible positioning or too less attention? The man in yellow at least catches up to Torres, who still put up a huge fight amongst those much better climbers/puncheurs..
+ 4'40" Intxausti
+ 5'00" Torres and Rohregger
So more than two minutes behind Marquez, who was just some minor seconds down in the GC prior to this stage..
..and who slips into yellow with three stages (including another key-stage, the ITT) to come: Marquez leads the GC by 28" on Abal, 36" on Nazaret and 44" on Pedraza. Abal as the best TT-specialist amongst those four may fancy his chances to attack the new GC-leader in the timetrial.
Intxausti drops from 1st to 7th, now 2'09" down on the GC-lead! Augustyn goes up to 8th ahead of Torres and Ji. With already a minutes-gap on GC's 11th Dyachenko, the Top-10 seems to be "sealed" bar any drama on the flat stages.
Final Results Stage 5/
(Due to a random bug, that wouldn't allow me to access to the post-stage results/exports we ain't got the complete results again. Recreated the most important stage-results though and the GC, too)
