So we take a bit of an interlude on the 5th stage with Utah’s race organisers in their infinite wisdom inserting a tight criterium style stage before tomorrow’s queen stage up Snowbird.
It’s an important day for Saïd Haddou who could not build much on his Individual Division two leadership out in Hong Kong. There a hill hurt the French man and this loop of just 2 kilometres involves a fair climb on too.
Alert to the danger race leader Anthony Colby actually leads the field by the sixth lap.
The usual early stage attacks nullified by AMEX have caused mayhem behind with the lines between the end of the pack and the beginning of the pack pretty blurred. Fortunately for the race judges and reporters we have GPS tags to pick up whose ahead.
Matthew Cranehas done a great job of keeping his team leader Colby up near the front as Gazprom have opportunistically driven the pace hard through Andrea Masciarelli for Sergei Klimov
The result is that these two along with Crane and Colby have gapped the field with 20km and nine laps of 2km to go.
Reactions to this are mixed through the field as the GPS signals are going haywire. It seems we have several splinter groups across the road. Behind the lead four there is definitely a group containing stage 4 hero Gilberto Sampaio and another former race leader in Edgar Restrepo about 40 to 50 seconds back.
Realising that this is not likely to be Haddou’s day, Peter Pancake is sent to try and get forward. To this second group from further back.
Remmert Wielinga is the UPC rider trying and failing to go with Pancake. His teammate Isidro Nozal has made the second group ahead however.
It does mean that other riders in the Restrepo/Sampaio/Nozal group such as Esteban Mardones and Yennier López Fonseca are going to profit today.
Not as much as Gazprom and AMEX though who seem to have done a deal here as Crane and Masciarelli share the pacemaking right up to the last lap actually increasing their lead. Colby is building a very nice buffer for himself going into the queen stage. Gazprom are here for the stage which Klimov starts to sprint clear of the others.
He takes the win comfortably.
Crane drops back on the last lap as Colby finishes second for twelve more bonus seconds along with Masciarelli in third.
Crane just holds on for fourth 90 seconds later with that second group on the road led in by S-Tel pair Ivan Stevic and Goran Smelcerovic
The stage that was expected to be the most docile of the race could well have proved the most decisive. The likes of Mancebo and Kloden cross the finish line waving angrily at the officials hoping perhaps for a neutralisation that is not going to come.
Expect some angry attacks on tomorrows queen stage, though AMEX will of course look to bring the victory home for Colby. The American is the big winner from today with now nearly two minutes on Sampaio and two minutes plus on everyone else.
