Okay, Lopez Garcia held on to his lead yesterday but he will need to watch his back in the next three days as Samwel and Kilun are not too far away. Today is the toughest of the remaining stages, though most of the climbing difficulties are early on.
The finish is a little awkward while we do not finish on an incline there a little leg breaker fairly close to end. Even so this should be very much a day for whichever sprinters have come over the climbs with some energy to spare. A breakaway may have a chance but no-one is taking the chance, clearly everyone in the peleton is pretty tired.
So the early two KOM classed climbs, fairly small points offerings a 4th cat and a 3rd cat sees Zwizanski, Betencourt and Craven go for them. Oh and bizarrely Petrov of Benfica suddenly decides to go for points.
Zwizanski, Betencourt, Petrov and Craven go for KoM points
Red Bull’s American rider Scott Zwizanski grabs some useful points over the days King of the Mountains. He moves up to 57 points getting to joint 3rd with Ortega of Santander. Dan Craven who started the day on 71 points seals his win in that classification by taking six more points to move to 77 points. Betencourt can only move to 50 points, meaning he will not move up into the top four here.
Craven (77), Mercado (59), Ortega (57) and Zwizanski (57) is the KoM situation after the three climbs today. Second through to fourth should be interesting for tomorrows 4th category climb.
At the sprints we see Quiksilver setting up their fast man who can also climb in Damian Martinez, who grabs 14 points and 14 seconds from the three sprint primes today. Hofland (Bimbo Nutella), Martinez’s lead out Nizzola and Rafael Valls are also involved in the sprints.
Martinez grabs lots of points and bonus seconds
Full results from the sprints are...
Sprint 1: Hofland, Martinez, Nizzola
Sprint 2: Martinez, Valls, Nizzola
Sprint 3: 2nd Martinez and 3rd Hofland.
The Cuban Quiksilver man is edging his way forward on GC and more significantly on the points classification where he is going well.
A Benfica rider goes on a short attack to take the maximums at the last sprint prime and KOM prime but Riberio is back in the finale. It is a strange one lacking in proper trains and Carlos Manarelli (Red Bull) takes a flier with 2.6km to go.
Manarelli moves away from the pack
In a flat sprint this would normally be curtains because despite not featuring in the sprints due to the presence of Sutton in the Red Bull outfit, Manarelli is an excellent sprinter. But the slight incline before the finish hurts the Brazilian as that familiar Quiksilver jersey of Damian Martinez comes zooming past.
Martinez comes zooming past Manarelli
Behind Manarelli is Rafael Valls of Santander who has a real shot at taking bonifications which would take him to 5th on GC. Looking higher on GC, Kilun and Samwel are highly placed but do not look like getting the into the top 3 as they need. Lopez Garcia though is hanging around at the back of the peleton ... looking decidedly dodgy as well.
Lopez Garcia suddenly realises there is a gap there and looks to close it
Up front as the road flattens out Martinez holds himself together and Manarelli starts to move away again. Valls fades only to be taken over by his teammate Oscar Guereo.
Guereo selfishly overtakes Valls
Martinez takes a victory to really move himself forward on GC, Manarelli is second, Guereo third.
Martinez grabs the win
Behind though huge headlines, Lopez Garcia has carelessly lost contact, no idea why it isn’t windy he was just at the back and going a bit laboured into this sprint.
Lopez Garcia is behind and gapped
He loses three places and is now off the podium. Major drama on stage five of the Vuelta Chihuahua.
More headlines as the thing crashed - however on next load up we were in the next stage. The Rankings were there and so I have cobbled together the stage results as best I can!
