So after not really being able to take much from the GC perspective, can Jagoba continue his decent form and give us a good result on the final stage?

In the order of which they crossed the climb, the escapees were:
Gerard
Tereul
Sijmens
De Negri



Again the sprint train was a failure. I was brought in to help with positioning, but Virgilijus and Jagoba were blocked with 4km left to go. I wasn't stopping though.


Again an easy win for Greipel. Rounding off the podium were Sinkeldam and Felline.


Jagoba took another Top 10 with 7th today.

Robinson Chalapud


Jagoba Aurrekoetxea


Fabio Melani


Leonardo Duque


Jarlinson Pantano


Juan Sebastian Arango


Juan Pablo Suarez

Wilson Marentes

With no break formed yet, the Sky trio of Fenn, Pate and Markus rode away from the bunch. The latter took maximum points.


When the break did form, it consisted of 4 riders:

Barbero
Carvalho
Sokol
Vallejo Dominguez


With the stage entering the business end, the peloton became frantic.


The result of this was several (!) bunch crashes, invloving between 2 and 10 riders each time. No huge names were affected, Castroviejo was the best rider down.


Some of these crashes also caused a big split. Our main climbing trio of Suarez, Chalapud and I were all behind, frantically trying to get back.


With 5km to go, we finally had a good train going. Jarlinson was very handy in getting over the hills in the closing kilometres.


But just as everything was going right, Leo put in a horrible leadout. He barely accelerated, and this left Jagoba in a very bad position.


Marcel Kittel took the win ahead of leadout man Ramon Sinkeldam and Andrea Guardini.


Jagoba took an amazing 5th, with Leo finally accelerating to 6th, and Arango 9th with a 3km sprint. God knows what could've been.


With 3 in the Top 10, the team lead was always ours.


A good day overall, as Jagoba continues to show us his amazing sprinting capabilities, while me and my fellow 'dropees' finished in the same time as the leaders.

Today is the one GC stage, so we need Robinson to be firing on all cylinders.

The break was 5 strong. Howevr, the peloton would make sure that they didn't survive until the end. Still, they were pretty strong:

Navarro
Bak
Herrada
Teruel
Piedra



Skip to the interesting bit. Robinson and I made the attack train, but I was, as usual, too strong on the downhill. Sean was quick to tell me over the team radio to keep going. Thank god the old DS wasn't here.


I was away solo, ahead of Robinson, and then the favourites group:

Froome
Contador
Van Garderen
Moreno
Quintana


I was keeping a constant 30" lead on them.

It was a 16" gap down to Rob, then a further 15" on the favourites, with 7km to go on the Cat. 1.


It was truly grueling. It felt like I just wanted to explode. I felt like I had never felt before, but then I realised. I am leading - with a constant gap - over the best climbers in the world.

At 2.8km to the summit, the energy was gone, but this thought kept me going. The gap was still 30". Could I do the impossible?


No... I was caught with 1km to the summit, but I stayed in the group, while others tried fruitlessly to attack away.


I just went first over the climb. Meanwhile, David Arroyo managed to crash on an 8% gradient...


I tried to leave the group on the last hill, but to no avail. I thus took the wheel of the best sprinter of us, Moreno. Luis Leon Sanchez has joined up with us, but was surprisingly not offering a leadout to his teammate.




I couldn't go around, my 'leadout man', while also misjudging the downhill trajectory - finishing with energy to spare. Quintana was the strongest, ahead of Contador, the Katusha duo, me, and then Froome.






A good performance I think personally. The KoM jersey and 2nd place behind the race winner out of the young riders. We still have tomorrow, though that is for Jagoba.