The second of the two flat stages in this race is here and the favourites are hard to pick, given that stage one winner Pichot fell yesterday, as well as favourite Bandiera and outside chance Sobrino. Siedler and Fabbri are attracting a lot of attention from bookmakers and may well go into this stage as favourites.
The stage is pan-flat for 187km but regardless people are willing to try it in the break. The first attack is started by the Brazilian climber F. Morandi.
He is followed straight away by Sarkisov Shapira
And these three are quickly followed by Vassdal Spasic
And that’s it! The first attack of five riders for the day sticks and the gap goes out quickly with no one else showing too much interest. Morandi is the best placed rider here at +10’21” and no one is a real threat in any of the jerseys.
The rain starts to come down heavily, and it continues to do so for most of the race. Through the first sprint point the gap is at 7’53” with 133.5km remaining. No one shows much interest, so Morandi just rolls over in first place.
Back in the peloton several teams have contributed one rider each, but they aren’t working too hard. They are Gazprom Het Nieuwsblad Pivovarna
Skipping straight to the second check, with 92km remaining, the lead is out to 12’53”. Morandi once again rolls over in first place, but more importantly for him, with the lead at almost 13 minutes he is the provisional leader on the road.
The lead continues to go out because the only one working in the peloton right now is Fajt. Even Kingspan don’t look too worried about defending their lead. With 70km remaining the lead is out to 14’35” and this break is looking more and more like something that could really decide the race.
The race by this point is on an 11km long circuit that takes the riders through the finish line and surprisingly, the break start to bring the peloton into their sight! The service cars are right in front of them.
Perhaps it is this which kicks Kingspan into action, but finally they decide to send Gallagher to the front, and he raises the pace.
And Gallagher just rides.
And rides.
And rides.
He is on the front of the peloton alone for about 30km and in that time he brings the gap down to almost 10 minutes, meaning that Morandi is no longer the yellow jersey on the road. With 24km to go it finally reaches the critical point where Mancebo is safe and some other teams decide to start contributing to set things up for a sprint finish, even though there is no way that that is going to happen. Adecco Eurovision Pivovarna
Start working. Truth be told, their domestiques are probably hurting quite badly after two days in the mountains, so it isn’t too surprised that no one could organise a chase except for the mountain-heavy Kingspan.
Finally something happens as Jurco falls!
This causes a handful of riders to be delayed as they dodge the accident and with the pace high things don’t look good for them. Caught behind are Zwizanski Kloden Arekejev Fabbro Zwizanski is currently in 27th and Kloden is wearing the green jersey on loan from the race leader.
Shortly afterwards there is another faller as Dviri hits the tarmac, thanks to the heavy rain. He gets up and joins the group that was dropped earlier, and it is certain at this point that they won’t be getting back in.
Up front Morandi puts in the first big dig with 18.3km remaining and Shapira goes with him!
Their gap hovers at about the 30-40 second mark, and the three chasers can’t seem to make any more dent than that, so with 2.5km to go it is clearly down to these two for the race win, with the chasers 31” behind them.
Shapira has cleverly let Morandi do all the work in these closing kilometres and so he has prime position behind him.
In the chasers, the gap starts to come down slightly as Morandi slows up a bit and Sarkisov is looking strong. He launches himself!
Shapira comes around Morandi and takes the victory! Sarkisov’s acceleration completely closed the gap, but Morandi still holds him off for second place on the day. Vassdal takes fourth and Spasic fifth.
The gap back to the peloton has come down considerably, and Urtasun leads the pack home 5’03” behind the peloton. The dropped riders lose another 4 minutes after this.
There are no major changes in the jerseys, though Shapira and Morandi move up to second and third in the points jersey, meaning that Shapira will hold it on loan tomorrow. The team competition also changes leaders as Petrobras takes the lead off Kingspan, who drop to second That competition will be decided tomorrow, as will the overall.
