Yesterday, it was a stage for the sprinters, today we get into the mountains to end with a mountain top finish. Although the average gradiant isn't so high compared to tommorow's Angliru, the climb lasts for 25 km, so nothing for the weak.
The favorites for the stage are Cunego (obviously), Intxausti and Andy Schleck. Although there are many other great climbers present, so there might be a surprise.
Like always, a lot of attacks, and 13 riders hit the road. But again, like yesterday split up in different groups.
Behind them, there's a group of 8 riders, with Deignan, Van Houts, Koren, Poels, Maillet, Anza, Rangel and Matamoros. Deignan is the strongest climber here, Colombia sending forward a helper for Duarte?
And then the last group on the road: Kruijswijk, Caldwell and Rienda Segura. They'll never make it to the front though.
On the first climb of the day, the big group catch the other two riders to form a lead group of 10 riders total. Anza takes the KoM points in front of Poels and Maillet. There is no sprint as they probably realize that they won't get the KoM jersey anyways with 30 points given to the leader at the end of the stage.
After that, they were of in a straight line to the final climb. At the foot, they had a 4 minute gap back to the peleton, which wouldn't be enough with 25 km climbing to come. As soon as they hit the final climb Camier got dropped.
It didn't take to long before the attacks came in the peleton. Kolesnikov, Kiserlovski and Ratiy were first, countered by Duarte and Pedraza. Although, with still 24km to go, this seems likely to fail.
And yes, with the high pace in the peleton by La Gazzetta, only Pedraza and Duarte manage to create a gap.
At the 18km mark, Duarte and Pedraza caught the leaders, but the peleton is only one minute behind them, although La Gazzetta is running out of helpers.
With 15km to go, we got the first real big attacks; Castano, Popovych, Pozzovivo, Caruso and Arroyo.
They manage to get a small gap on the peleton, but not much later, Intxausti, Fothen and Henao Monotyo attack. Blasting wright past Castano & co.
Everyone get's reeled in again, except for former TDF-winner Markus Fothen. He has 40 second gap with 10km to go.
But then, none other then Il Piccolo Principe takes the chase on him and the results are there. 3 km later the gap is back to 20 seconds and Cunego got a gap on the favorites group togheter with Arroyo, Dekker, Castano and Intxausti.
As Cunego lessens the pace a bit, Intxausti attacks. Good move by the young Spaniard. But Cunego, after leading a 3km chase still has the legs to react, and even goes past Intxausti. They both reach Fothen in no time.
With 4 km to go the situation is; Cunego, then Intxausti on 10 seconds, behind him Fothen on another 10 seconds. Behind him everything came back togheter and we have a group of about 20 riders. Already on 50 seconds though.
But then, with 2 km to go, Intxausti and Fothen are coming awfully close to Cunego. Has he overestimated himself?
Actually, never mind. Cunego switches up the gear and bursts away from Fothen and Intxausti. He has a comfortable lead with 1 km to go.
The best rider in the world takes yet another victory, but who will get second?
Intxausti passes Fothen for second. Both have ridden a very good race, but still come in 28 seconds behind Cunego.
1'07" later, the big group of favorites comes in lead by Castano and Kolesnikov. However, there was a gap between 12 and 13 of 15 seconds, so A. Schleck loses some more time, he must have had a bad day.
