The second stage of Tour de San Luis is also the queen stage of the race with the hardest finish. Richeze will definetely have a hard day with 3 other climbs on the route and today we should see shining riders like Serpa, Taaramae, Kohl and other general classification favorites
On the first climb we also had the first attacks of the day. Mandri went away from the pack, closely followed by Kessiakoff and Tadej Valjavec, who was also the first at the top of the summit
Valjavec was also one of the 7 riders that got away in the main breakaway of the day but because of the strong win they never managed to stay all together. Most of the time, the entire first half of the stage actually, Mollema and Sambris were in the leading group. They were followed one by one by: Valjavec, Landaluze, Serrano, Bochman and Doi
On the second climb of the day, Valjavec joined Mollema and Sambris in the leading group. But this time at the top he was only second, the first rider being the Dutch from Bbox. On the flat section that followed the climb, Landaluze also joined the leading group growing the number of riders in front up to 4
But as soon as the third climb started, we were back to three riders in the leading group as Sambris wasn’t able to keep it up with the others. Valjavec was first at the top in front of Mollema and Landaluze, but with the big climb of the day still to be passed we will have to see if he will take the KoM jersey at the end of the day
Still the escapes managed to start the last climb of the day with less than one minute advantage over the pack. Mollema attacked at the foot of the climb and he was the last escape to be caught, with less than 7 kilometers to go
As soon as the Dutch was caught the attacks started in the pack but no one was strong enough to make a gap. But a few riders were able to stretch the pack and at the 5 kilometers banner, Marquez was leading followed by Martinez, Niemiec, Lloret and then the pack with most of the favorites
Then the steepest parts of the climb started and Marquez went away building quite a nice gap between him and the others, soon having almost 1 minute advantage over his closest chasers
He wasn’t able to get a bigger gap as behind him, Taaramae and Serpa took the lead of the pack and stretched it even more. But neither of them looked strong enough to catch the Benfica rider though
After a few moments Taaramae and Serpa got a gap over the other chasers, with Kohl being the only one able to follow them but Marquez was still in safety in front even though it will be easier for them to chase him without the others hanging behind them
Behind them, Abal was leading the other chasers who managed to build a gap in front of the pack. Behind Abal were Augustyn, Martinez, Mayo, Lloret, Niemiec, Noval and Nazaret
Marquez entered the final kilometer in a solo lead, with Serpa doing his best behind to catch him, while the other chasers being very close to each other so no big gaps should be made between them in the last kilometer
And Florentino Marquez wins the queen stage of Tour de San Luis 2011! He also becomes the new leader of the general, mountain and youth rankings
Serpa took the second place, 46 seconds behind him, while Kohl and Taaramae finished together 1 minute behind Marquez, but Taaramae is expected to win some time back in the next stage, which is the 19 kilometers ITT
David Abal lead the next group, 1 minute and 26 seconds behind Marquez, followed by Nazaret, Augustyn, Noval, Lloret and Niemiec, who was the last rider to finish in front of the pack, all having different time loses. The strongest riders in the pack finished 2 minutes and 44 seconds behind the Spaniard, while the others lost at least 3 minutes
As expected, Richeze finished in a grupetto, with 3 other UBS riders there to protect him. Even though he lost almost 9 minutes he kept the points jersey won after the opening stage
