Lots of hills on the 2nd stage in Portugal and in especially the late Cat.2 has slopes up to 16%.
But for an attack the last Cat.4 might be more suited as there is just a 3km downhill section after the top.
Only 3 riders join the breakaway today: Selig Van Baarle Merino Criado
But while airBaltic and Amex could have been expected here, CSC has a top rider behind in Costa, who surely wants at least one stage win in his home race.
First KoM in this race and Van Baarle takes it ahead of Merino Criado and Selig. With several more points to be given today, the KoM fight should become interesting.
A sprint is following soon and Selig shows, that he is clearly the strongest sprinter here. Van Baarle and Merino Criado can only fight for the 2nd.
As yesterdays prologue did not result in huge time gaps, all those collected seconds could play out well for those in the end in case they make it to the finish.
Mainly the two Russian teams are doing the early pace. Nevertheless the gap goes up to 7min with 145km to go.
Also Mobil with one man in this train, so Vrecer might plan something today.
110km to go and with a maximum gap of almost 9min, Prio, CSC and Cisco join LukOil and higher the pace while Tinkoff is saving some energy for the final.
So CSC indeed decides to go for Costa, while Merino Criado is staying in the group fighting for the KoM.
And he does so pretty successful. 2nd KoM and the CSC rider takes it ahead of Selig and Van Baarle.
Surely it helps him, that he is no longer working in the group and so saves a lot of energy. Not the best scenario for the other two.
90km and still 7min. Cisco has big plans for this race and so they send 3 riders to the front followed by 4 CSC and 3 Tinkoff riders. So that`s quite a lot of workers against just two riders working in the breakaway.
Kappa - ENI has obviously no ambitions today and so three of their riders relax and drop out of the peloton for no real reason. It`s Hacecky (10.), Appollonio and Fonzi. They should be careful as the time gap could easily become a problem when losing contact that early.
Next sprint and again Selig with an easy win. Merino Criado 2nd and Van Baarle 3rd take a few more bonus seconds.
We reach the Cat.3 and Van Baarle wins it ahead of Selig and Merino Criado only as 3rd. They trio really fights for every point here and can "relax" a bit now as we reach the longest downhill of the day.
Also the peloton has finished the downhill now and with a few kilometers left until the hardest climb of the day we already see some attacks by 2nd tier riders. Silva Tamayo Martinez Wang Acevedo Boily Schrangl
But all of them are caught again during the climb. Cisco, CSC, Tinkoff and LukOil combined is just too strong for early attacks.
Selig wins the KoM on top with Merino Criado and Van Baarle following. But also the peloton is just behind already where Schrangl and Zakarin take the last points.
So as the breakaway is caught now, we count the KoM and see that all 3 riders have exactly 18 points. So the stage result might have to tell, who will wear the jersey tomorrow.
The climb delivered some selections and we have Schrangl leading the race as he attacked just ahead of the KoM. Behind him a 31 rider group containing several favourites. But a few are a few meters behind in a bigger group: Karpets Iglinski Rohregger Nazaret Reus Gavazzi Ivars Vrecer Suaza Ventoso
But seeing the size of the group and the names in there, a fusion should be quite probable. Unlucky Rohregger though has to do the work alone so far, which is weird as LukOil should be expected to work the most as they have the two biggest names here plus a few helpers.
It actually took 10km to join the front again, which is far more than I had expected. But at least all favourites are back in a 61 rider group, where Wang is leading with a tiny gap at the moment.
Biggest names behind are Gretsch (2.) or Lo Cicero (11.) but this was expected.
Here comes one of the favourites for the hilly stages. Rui Costa passes Wang easily and goes strong with 13,5km to go on the 2nd last hill.
So he also takes the sprint ahead of Ventoso, who sprints as only rider in the favourite group. Cisco`s Schelling as 3rd due to his work. A bit surprising that no other rider tried to sprint for those last 2 seconds here.
Mendes is allowed to attack as well to fight for the stage win but unluckily Iglinski is right behind him, which is bad for the GC riders, that might have allowed Costa/Mendes to get a small gap.
But now the pace is obviously very high.
But Costa does not give up yet and is still fighting. With a small gap he comes over the top taking the KoM ahead of Possoni and Zakarin. But this gap is pretty small and might be not enough to win the stage.
The sprint starts here on the downhill section and we see lots of big names in the first rows a bit behind solo leader Costa: Reus Ferrari Nazaret Karpets/Iglinski/Huzarski/Izagirre Plaza/Mendes Kritskiy/Zakarin Caruso/Possoni/Osella Konovalovas
At the end of the peloton also a few big names like Ivars or Suaza, while Ventoso and Gavazzi lost contact completely.
A bit more than 1km to go and it`s not looking good for Costa as Konovalovas, Kritskiy, Mendes, Zakarin, Plaza, Nazaret in this order come from behind.
This will be very close today.
With just 400m to go Costa is caught. Unlucky him.
It`s looking like a fight in between Kritskiy and Plaza now. Maybe the fight of the race in general.
But it`s Kritskiy...again. The Russian must be one of the riders with the most wins this season and also convinced all by his sprint skills. Plaza with a great 2nd today but still he will lose his jersey to Kritskiy today but at least keeping the point jersey.
Mendes as 3rd ahead of Konovalovas and Costa as 5th.
After teh first ~30 riders we have lots of small gaps but good for some riders like Ivars, Rohregger, Cabreira or Suaza the officials don`t give any time gaps for the first 23 riders.
This is also good news for breakaway rider Van Baarle, who is the last rider with the winner`s time, which moves him into the 9th overall, 1st U25 and also 1st in the KoM ranking shared with his breakaway companions.
Also the Kappa trio, who was dropped early are still in the race as they made it within the time limit.
