A short, flat stage and the bookies once again have Nazon as their favourite and yet again Casper isn't even tipped as a front-runner.
The break of the day was just a single rider, Niels Albert. He was looking to grab some KOM points towards the classification and try to take the lead. He can't take the lead from the available 5 points on offer today but tomorrow there is another 5 points and if Lejman fails to get any points from the 2 KOM points then Albert can win the classification. Damn he's smart.
Grabovski punctured early on but he would make contact with the peleton again.
Albert won the KOM sprint and from the peleton sprint there was no challenge from Lejman, as Matzbacher and Sabido swept up the rest of the points. Albert also made it to the intermediate sprint and obviously won that, then only 2 riders were interested in contesting the peleton sprint as Casper and Grillo took 2nd and 2rd respectively.
With 35kms to the finish, Albert still has a 2'30 advantage but he is all alone so it will still be very difficult. Then...
Attack from the peleton!! Vicioso, Escobar, Cruz and Lindgren set off in an attempt to suprise the sprinters.
Bad luck for them though as they suprised no-one and were caught with 28kms left. Albert shortly joined them as he was caught with 22kms left.
There are 2 trains for the sprint, closest we have Wrolich-Usov-Nazon-Grillo-Casper-Zanotti and on the far left we have Chavanel-Tombak-Bongiorno-Traksel-Markov.
With 1km to go, Usov is still out in front as Nazon is waiting for the right time to come out of his wheel. No-one else is close to them, this should be an easy win for Nazon.
And it is!! Great positioning from Nazon gives him the win and Usov takes a very impressive 2nd. The GC stays the same, as does the U-25 classification and the KOM classification. Technically the points classification is the same as well, due to Casper keeping the jersey, but Nazon is on equal points with him.
