The Tour moves on to the provincial capital San Juan today and on the way we take in a mountain prime. The winner of this will carry the jersey through to stage 7 whereby we tackle the Alto de Colorado.
Yesterday we saw Eurovision's Oleg Chuzhda
take control of the race. This was really set up by Adecco, they decide on a different strategy today to actually go for the sprint primes properly.
It is their attacking 24 year old Swiss Andreas Anderegg
who takes the opening sprint points and time bonuses. Decent Dutch rouler Arjen De Baat
is second with Pekka Jääskeläinen
third.
It is a good little move by Anderegg as he now overtakes Lennie Kirk
in the young riders competition. In the background we can see Sergey Sarkisov Antonio Bucciero
and Cyril Lemoine
Lemoine is another very good time triallist, we saw several try and nip up the road yesterday and with two sprint primes on the plateau that we climb too today. Four more riders bridge:
Canadian champion Charles Dionne
notable as he is fifth on GC, 18 seconds back from Chuzhda. He has Lubomir Petrus Tobyn Horton
and Yannick Eijssen
for company.
Make that four more also chasing behind that as well.
Perrig Quemeneur Josip Dugardein Dietmar Lambrecht
and Juri Yuda
This letter four however are not really strong enough to bridge with Quemeneur left to do the majority of the work.
The first King of the Mountains sees the early attackers duke it out as the Dionne group just latch onto the end. It is De Baat who takes the useful mountains prize ahead of Sarkisov and Anderegg.
The sprint primes in the village with circle through on the plateau sees Horton take the first from Lemoine and Dionne.
It gets a bit confusing though with the pack one lap behind the leaders mixing with them. The ten leaders keep away from the last four chasers, but eagle eyed officials are need to find the winners of the third sprint. Bucciero going over first with Horton second and Lemoine third.
Dyson's Lemoine really getting some useful little bonuses before tomorrows chrono. The pack are alert to the break though with Chuzhda's Eurovision finding an ally through the on form Ashley Hutchinson
team Eftel.
Rather strange happening at the back of the pack as eight riders are mysteriously dropped as they go back through the team cars.
Paul Healion Jaoa Costa Joost Van Leijen Marco Brus Wilson Rincón Matej Jurco Steve Zampieri Owen Fabbro
Some of these riders are good climbers and thus blow their chance of half decent GC positions through this move.
20km to go the ten man break has just 1.30, but we see late attacks from the pack as their chase effort slows.
Victor Shishelov Anthony Colby
and once again Kevin Barclay
It's a nice move by yesterdays crash victim Anthony Colby and they ease up to and past the breakaway, Colby kicks again.
Eftel feel that if they can get Hutchinson in position he has the speed for today and keep working behind gradually picking off most of the break.
But five are still out there with De Baat and Bucciero joining Shishelov and Barclay behind Colby. The Vodafone rider looks to steal a march on the other three.
We are down to the last three kilometers here and Samsung Mol having done none of the work have once again moved Daniel Thorsen
into position today he has Mike Friedman
on his wheel.
Up front Bucciero has moved himself forward in front of Barclay as they chase down Colby under the kite.
As Bucciero goes into the lead we can see from the helicopter that Thorson now in 6th has a lot of work to do to catch with Friedman and Hutchinson right there.
Colby tries to hold on to Bucciero's wheel as Thorson and Freidman weave between the wheels and past Barclay.
The Italian holds on for the win, but it is tight with poor Colby edged out into 4th behind Freidman and Thorson.
