Today we have the only time trial in the U23 division, and after the lack of gaps on yesterday, the hardest stage of the race, this time trial now looks set to be particularly race defining.
Favourites for the stage win are:
the Norwegian Vassdal, who was 12th in last years U23 TT World Champs, Pokerstars' Vandoussellaere, who was 20th, and is favourite here to take over the yellow jersey
Red Bull's Vicelich and O'Neill (the Kiwi was 27th in the Worlds)
Milka's O'Shea
Wiggle stagiare Paquet, riding for Festina
Yamaha's Rodriguez (23rd in Worlds)
Quiksilver's Boivin (36th in Worlds) - and the only rider on this list, other then Vandoussellaere, who is still left in GC contention
First up is Tinkoff's Manakov, who lost a ton of time on the first stage under mysterious circumstances, but 8 riders later is the first real benchmark in the form of Vesuvio's Danilo Milioni, setting a time of 1'06:38 - 58 seconds up on Manakov.
Yamaha's Cancino is 32 seconds down, while Telnor's Sortveit goes 34 seconds down. Another Yamaha rider does better, Pantano Gomez just 11 seconds back. ElAl's Bras and Telenor's Ziesler slot in the gap between Pantano and Cancino, before Milioni's time in the lead is up - Lipton's Kazakh Azizov turning around a 3 second deficit at the 2nd check into a 1 second lead. But there are faster riders on course, and closing in on the finish.
Falcon's Morkov goes 4th at 18 seconds, and here we go Rene Pedat of UBS, the new leader by 32 seconds. Doesnt last long though - just 4 riders, Vicelich arrives and the Aussie now leads by 20 seconds.
Vicelich wont even get a chance to sit in the winners enclosure though. The very next rider to finish, having passed a Wikipedia rider out on course, is favourite Ken Sebastian Vassdål, and simple as that, into the lead he goes - by 21 seconds.
Not mentioned by the game as a favourite is Fonne Woortman. But finishing just after Vassdål, and into 2nd place he goes, for the Jack Wolfskin rider - 9 seconds down.
Festina's Eissen takes 5th, albeit 70 seconds down, a time improved by Glenn O'Shea - only 62 seconds down. Another 8 seconds is knocked off 5th place by Jack Wolfskin's Bezemer, before Wagemans of Pokerstars edges another 2 seconds quicker into 5th. But next in is Julian Paquet, and he takes 4th - 28 seconds down on Vassdål.
Shane O'Neill takes 6th place, and we've now reached the riders fighting it out for GC. Wikipedia's Kenny Tiffany goes 56 seconds down, while Zimbabwean Bryce Moore is at 74 seconds. Laengen goes 2 seconds quicker than Moore, before Milka's Vysna equals Tiffany's time. Frederic Boivin soon takes over the lead of the battle to be race leader at the finish though, the Canadian going 5th in the stage - 31 seconds down.
Yamaha's Andres Rodriguez next. The Colombian goes close to Boivin, but is 1 second off.
ElAl's Reza beats the time of Tiffany, 54 seconds down overall, while Belohoubek is 2 seconds in the other direction, behind Tiffany and Vysna. Iranian Khalilikhosroshani moves into a net 3rd in GC next though, and 8th on the stage so far, 48 seconds down on the leading Norwegian. He was 16th overall at the start of the day, so not long until we get the man who was 12th overall - Vandoussellaere. He is moving into the provisional race lead, no question, but it's going to be oh so close in the stage win battle.
Theres 1 second in it.
But Vandouessellaere does it, he beats Vassdål and will certainly win the stage.
Red Bulls' Williamson goes 18th, 68 seconds down, before Bacardi's Tieri, who can afford to be 11 seconds or less behind Vandoussellaere and still take a lead .. but he matches Williamson's time only, so thats out of the question.
3rd overall Bercz scrapes into the Top 60, 1'53 down. 2nd overall Bar does better but has still lost 1'43 - both will lose a number of places in GC. And finally the race leader, Charles Anguillet.
Started the day 59 seconds ahead of Vandoussellaere, but that is nowhere near enough. He is well down in 82nd, losing over 2 minutes, dropping to 12th in GC.
And so here are the final results, and we see Vandoussellaere's winning margin had been rounded up to 2 seconds.
