Today brings a huge change in the terrain. Oh wait no, it doesn’t. Once again a pan flat stage with two sprint points. This time the course is 153.8km in length but realistically that shouldn’t make too much difference. The same favourites are expected to fight this one out.
The race starts off with an attack from Ulugbek Galiev (Cisco). The young Kazakh could have a bright future in front of him as a climbing domestique but for today he will be working his way around the flat course.
He is joined by stage 1 breakaway member Janier Alexis Acevedo (Repsol). The peloton are happy to let these two goes and this means that Cisco is the only team to be in the break on all three days thus far. Not only that but Vesely has been sprinting better than expected so they are having a good first few days.
Their lead grows quickly and gets out to about 3’50”. Approaching the sprint, however, the pace in the peloton really increases. Pro-Porto are pushing this really, really hard. They realise that if Avelino takes the bonus seconds he will be provisionally in the leader’s jersey and that will keep the pressure high on Hollister.
Approaching the first intermediate sprint the break are looking like they might possibly be run down. Kip and Avelino really put in a huge effort. Kip is looking for the points to pull on the point jersey which he has on loan from Serebriakov.
The break hold on and it is Acevedo who crosses the line first ahead of Galiev. Kip takes third, putting him only 3 points down. Prio-Porto will be disappointed that Avelino couldn’t finish that tough bit of work off, but there will be more opportunities later.
Another effect of this sprint is that the breakaway is caught. No one looks keen to replace them through the second half, realising that they are just likely to be run down before the second sprint anyway. Hollister and Prio are both happy to set a fairly easy pace.
As such we get to the second intermediate sprint and there are 6 bonus seconds and points on offer. All of the major sprinters here go for it and it is a tough competition but Serebriakov will be pleased to win this one. Kip comes in second and Avelino must settle for third. That puts Avelino 10” behind Serebriakov now.
We get to the 10km remaining mark and ING and Prio-Porto are both really present. Brea is the only man in front of Serebriakov at this point.
The pace starts to increase dramatically after a relatively sedate previous 50km, making everyone nervous. And almost inevitably there is a crash towards the front of the peloton, with only 8.5km to the line!
News starts to crackle through the race radio, and we get some news on some of the riders who went down:
Carlos Castano, Andres Saldarriaga (ING)
Mikayil Krasnoperov, Victor Hugo Orozco (Bintang)
Jairo Agudelo, Wilmer Vasquez (Repsol)
Hernani Brea, Jonathon Monsalve (Hollister)
Sascha Damrow (WWE)
More than this went down but these are the major ones. There are a lot of big GC threats here, such as Krasnoperov and Castano, as well as Brea who is Serebriakov’s key lead-out man.
But the race must go on. Prio-Porto and ING are both setting up their trains.
On the left is the Prio-Porto train:
Mendes (Prio)
Caldeira (Prio)
Avelino (Prio)
Serebriakov (Hollister)
Cano (BNCR)
Weylandt (Bouygues)
And on the right ING have their competing train:
King (ING)
Thire (ING)
Kip (ING)
De Fauw (Bintang)
With 3km to the line King comes off the front of the ING train and disrupts those behind him. Kip loses Thire’s wheel and De Fauw is forced off to the right alone!
De Fauw is forced to launch out on the right as Thire slows to get Kip back on his wheel.
With 1500m to go Thire has clawed some space back against Caldeira, but Avelino and Serebriakov are in the perfect position. Weylandt decides to launch a bit earlier around the left!
With 1km to go Serebriakov launches his sprint! Prio-Porto have done a great job setting him up.
Avelino launches his sprint and looks to challenge and so too does Cano. Could we see another huge upset here? Weyland,t meanwhile, is boxed in a bit.
With 400m to go Serebriakov still leads. Avelino is coming quickly but has he left it too late?
Weylandt frees himself up and comes through quickly. This is so close....
And Avelino takes his stage win by just over a wheel’s length!
What a sprint! Weylandt sneaks past Serebriakov for 2nd, relegating the Russian to 3rd. Kip recovers after the disaster in his train to just beat Cano to the line. Vesely puts in another good show with 6th. Ghafari takes 7th with Popov, Pineau and Goos finishing off the top 10.
And Avelino will be thrilled to see that he also takes the leader’s jersey thanks to his bonus seconds in the previous stage. Serebriakov just holds on to the points jersey, 1 point ahead of Avelino. Thankfully no one abandons the stage after the crash, though plenty of leaders went down so it will be a matter of watching their performance in coming days. Some teams, Bintang in particular, will be absolutely disappointed after that crash.
