After 3 stages for the overall favourites we finally enter the sprinter stages. Unlucky for the guys, who had to abandon yesterday but were hoping to win today.
So the list of sprinters is shorter than expected. Swift and Van Heerden maybe the two biggest favourites.
But more riders want to perform well today. Granjel Cabrera, Steegmans, Grillo, Bozic, Duque or Pedersen.
But with some hilly difficulties in the last 40km will make it more difficult than most of them would have preferred.
9 riders in todays break of the day. With Frei we have yet again another Suisse rider here, who are very active so far in their home race.
Kennaugh already collected 16 points and is 5th in the ranking, so he has a chance of climbing on the 1st today.
Also Cattaneo and Camier already collected a few points and could climb up the ladder. Sys Zingle Frei Dees Cattaneo Kennaugh Tendero Malori Camier
Just a little bit later 3 more riders attack. Bono, Lhottelerie and Leezer.
Team B&O do most work alone today for race leader Pluchkin.
They get little support by Bacardi for Steegmans and Spyker for Pedersen.
But it`s not that fast at the moment and so the gap is widening.
Without fighting for the points the group is rolling over the first intermediate with the 3 rider group still a bit behind.
For the statistics Zingle takes it ahead of Frei and Kennaugh.
Later just ahead of the first longer climb the 2 groups come together and with 12 riders they start the climb with a gap of almost 5min to the peloton.
As expected Kennaugh takes the maximum amount of 10 points. Malori, Leezer, Bono and Sys are coming over next. UBS`s Tschopp probably had no big fear and so his team mate Frei was not ordered to challenge the Brit.
With 118km to go Camier is the new virtual leader. He was 7'59 back this morning after being in the break already yesterday. Now for the first time the gap got higher than 8 minutes.
Time for Wikipedia and Vesuvio to react. The two teams hope for a sprint today and chase the group now.
Ji is kissing the asphalt. Bad luck for the Chinese champion. He wasn`t the first today. Khalilikhosroshani and Fouquet happened the same in other situations.
Luckily the weather is really good today as some road sections are not in the best conditions.
2nd KoM sprint and surprisingly Kennaugh is not within the best three.
Bono takes it ahead of Cattaneo and Leezer.
The Brit obviously struggled on this smaller hill and wasn`t able to attack.
With 22km to go Bacardi - Ignis are pulling the next attack and the first on the hillier terrain. Burghardt jumps out of the peloton, is looking back if someone follows and goes solo.
The group is still 2 min ahead.
Malori, Lhotellerie and Zingle lead the group over the last sprint with 20km to go. The gap is melting fast now. They need to continue to work together if they want to keep the little chance of surprise.
Vesuvio is doing the most now with a good support by Wikipedia. These two teams did all the work during the last 100km, so they surely expect something of their sprinters now.
Burghardt and the group are both withing sight now and should be caught soon.
Only negative for Vesuvio probably, that Intxausti is doing some of the work since the 30km mark. Will be interesting to see how the team will handle the next mountain stages again.
Will Intxausti also ride for the better placed Medvedev?
With 1km to the last KoM point Burghardt joins the group. The German really did a good job in chasing them solo.
Leezer, Dees and Burghardt collect the points on the top. But also the peloton is directly behind. This won`t have success today.
On the other side this is good news for Tschopp. Kennaugh is still 4 points behind as he couldn`t collect any of the possible 12 points on the last two sprints. Pretty sure Pendleton hoped for a bit more effort there.
With 5km to go it`s over. The group is back in the peloton. The pace was extremely fast on the last climb thanks to Hacecky.
Bad news for some sprinters including Swift and Van Heerden. Well placed until 10km to go, but when Hacecky accelerated on the last climb they felt back a bit and need to spend a lot of energy now to find a good position again.
Pluchkin in the first line. But also some sprinters are seen in the first rows.
Best probably Steegmans, who came well over the last bump and also Granjel Cabrera is not far behind him.
Quite early with 2,3km to go Steegmans starts the sprint from the pole positon with Cabrera hanging on his wheel. Also Pluchkin is coming on the right hoping for a few bonus seconds. Nothing to see from other sprinters as most GC favourites are within the first rows. Only Duque is there, but hasn`t started his sprint yet.
Reaching the last kilometer it`s still Steegmans while Cabrera can`t find enough speed to come past him. Pluchkin with a nice sprint and finally also Van Heerden and Swift are joining the sprint from behind. But can they still come back to challenge the win?
It looks like a secure win for Steegmans as Cabrera just doesn`t leave his back. Swift proves to be the fastest and overtakes Pluchkin. The bad positioning on the last hill was the key today.
So Steegmans takes the win. Not undeserved actually as it was Bacardi, who made the race more difficult with Burghardt`s attack. Cabrera hold on to 2nd with Swift being 3rd today. Pluchkin with a strong 4th although he won`t get anything of it but still ahead of Van Heerden on 5th.
