First mountain-stage here, which comes at 182km featuring the shortest, but also steepest summit finish in this tour (10% average).
GC-contenders like Velits, Kohl and Ratiy (who looked injured after his crash though) lost minutes yesterday and may need to attack top-favorite Schleck already today..
3 riders went clear early into the stage: El Fares, Beukeboom, Kennaugh.. the trio was joined by a mid-stage attacking trio 45km before finish: Hacecký, König and Serrano.
The 6-men-group leads by 2'43" at this point, with two more riders trying (but failing) to join them: Cattaneo and Anacona..
Kennaugh would take the first KoM-sprint, with Serrano grabbing the second.. but 10km to the line, the peloton is already chasing hard to narrow the gap to 28" in the meantime..
..this higher pace and the challenging last 20km did also lead to a first major split, with just 64 riders remaining in the peloton!
And looking back at one of those dropped groups, we notice a true shocker (yet again): Van den Broeck finds himself already 3 minutes down on the peloton!
We haven't noticed any crash or puncture.. also Suarez and Ratiy are already dropped at this point. The latter definitely suffering from his crash yesterday.. with VDB another GC-contender out of the mix here?
The peloton catches up to the escaping group right at the bottom of the 6km-climb to the finish, with just Kennaugh and Hacecký holding on to a 25"-gap..
..first favorite to attack: Schleck!
Kritskiy and Amador are the first trying to follow this strong kick by Schleck, who openend up a 26"-gap quickly!
We see also Marchante, Brambilla and Velits on the move now. The race is definitely on now!
It's also the end for the two last escapees, who are swallowed by those attacking groups immediately.. Schleck enters the final 4km solo, establishing a 42"-gap on Amador/Kritskiy!
Already 1'25" in arrears, we see quite a lot of action, with riders like Machado, Contador and Sella trying to jump behind the three favorites, that went clear..
2.5km to go and while the situation at the very front still remains the same, another duo managed to open up a gap on the bigger group with favorites:
Schleck
Amador Kritskiy at 0.43
Sella Machado at 1.15
Contador Velits Brambilla Cunego Guldhammer at 1.49
Kennaugh Marchante at 2.11
Nepomnyachsniy at 2.35
Kohl Valverde Mosschella at 2.47
The further groups with already more than 4 minutes of disadvantage are already out of contention for today, so Van den Broeck will definitely lose big time here..
1.2km to go for Schleck... 48" on Amador/Kritskiy... 1'20" Machado/Sella... 1'52" Cunego/Velits/Contador... 2'13" Brambilla/Guldhammer... 2'35" Marchante!
So only minor changes, as the riders keep fighting their way up this steep ascend!
A class of his own today, Schleck climbs to an impressive solo-victory to show his high ambitions to claim his first Suisse-title ain't too unrealistic!
55" later Amador crosses the line, gaining further 10" on Kritskiy and 19" on Sella Machado, who almost caught up to this first chasing duo.
1'45" for Velits Cunego and Contador.. not quite a perfect day for Velits, but at least he gained some time back on other contenders..
..like Guldhammer and Brambilla, who come in at 2'35" eventually!
Gomez Marchante comes in at 3'13", holding off a group with Valverde, Nepomnyachsniy and Kohl, who couldn't really fight back from losses yesterday.
Biggest question of the day: what happened to Van den Broeck? We're sorry for the lack of information here. If it was just bad positioning, it's quite strange to see him suffering on this short climb, eventually losing 8'12" on Schleck as today's 44th!
Two riders won't make the time-limit, with Kip as the more notable: quite some tough luck, as he punctured just when the peloton would start to chase harder. So no chance to go for the two remaining flat stages...
Schleck won't care too much about more GC-contenders losing minutes, as he took over a comfortable race-lead anyway. Still anything possible with many tough days to come though.
Final Results Stage 2/
Had some problems with the export-files, so not the full results covered here. At least did recreate the stage's Top-50 (thanks to roturn), so you should know the most notable gaps here
