@sutty Yeah, but something had to happen if Tejay was riding for a GC...
Dwars door Drenthe (1.1)
Marcel Kittel leads the team in this Dutch one-day race. We have only come to this race as lots of riders were going to be in a long period of no races if we didn’t.
Marcel is obviously the favourite for the win today, and for us, everything that is not a win, will be a disappointment
There are some cobbled sections in the first part of the race, but they shouldn’t be a problem for Marcel, who will race his final race before his MSR debut. His team-mates today are Sabatini, Campenaerts, Costa, Guerreiro, Conti and Claeys, who makes his debut in the season, the last Cepsa rider to do it.
Not a lot happened during the race. Some teams tried to increase the rhythm in the cobbled sections, to see if any rider could be dropped, but all our team stayed in the team, without working until the last 30 km, when we started our sprint train for Marcel
In the last 10 km, when we were about to catch the breakaway, in a 90-degree turn, there was a crash which involved Adrien, who had just finished his job in the front
This left our 6 remaining riders in a group with only other 3 riders pursuing the escapees
When we caught the break, we did some weird tactics, when the easy thing was lead-out the sprint for Marcel, who would won easily. Instead Victor attacked with 5 km to go. When he was caught we did the proper lead-out, but it would be Fabio the one who would fight for the win. Marcel stayed on his wheel, only in case he saw that Fabio wasn’t going to win, to sprint in the final metres.
But everything turned to be perfect, as Fabio Sabatini took the race, to win his first ever pro win!
Marcel was third, and in total we had 4 riders in the top10, and 6 in the top15
Terminillo’s time. The hardest stage of this year’s Tirreno-Adriatico without any doubt, the stage where the GC should be decided with lots of good climbers aiming for a big win today. Some of them will have to recover the time lost in the initial TTT, like both Italian assets; Nibali and Aru, and others like Froome or Quintana, have already the TTT advantage in their hands. We’ll try to fight for a top10 spot with Emanuel or Alexander
Vicente joined the breakaway again, and fought the intermediate sprints in order to try to get the lead in that classification. But the eventual stage winner denied him that.
Movistar and Sky started to put a high rhythm in the bunch when approaching the first slopes of Monte Terminillo. Then was when the break was caught, with Vicente being the last man standing.
Due to the super-high rhythm imposed by Moser, the group was already to reduced to 40-ish riders in the first 2 km of climbs, when Nibali made his move.
That made the group to explode completely. Only a few riders were able to follow the initial acceleration of the “Shark”, including Froome, Quintana, Aru, Pozzovivo and Meintjes, but in his second try, only Froome was able to barely follow him, to the point that Nibali had a 15-second lead on him at some point in the climb, but the Brit catched him soon.
Meanwhile, Alexander was in a third group in the road, a group which would fight for the final places of top10 today, although with gaps of other era.
In the sprint for the win, Froome was just a bit stronger than Nibali, and took the win together with the race lead
Quintana finished third, 1’30 after the leading duo. One minute later, a group with Meintjes, Pozzovivo and Aru arrived. Alexander was dropped from his group in the final km, reaching the finish 6 minutes later than Froome in 16th place. As said, other era gaps
