The last stage for today is a quite hilly stage. There should be no problems for the sprinters, though, to hang on to the peloton and make this end in a sprint finish. After all, the "difficult" passages of this stage are not really that difficult, and they are also far away from the finish line.
No riders were allowed to break away to begin with. In fact, the first riders who did get a small gap was a bunch of favourites who attacked for mountain points - Kashechkin, Sastre, Danielson and Schleck. None of them were interested in riding 190 km. by themselves, though, so shortly after they were back in the peloton. Instead, 3 riders attacked on the following hill, forming today's breakaway with 143 km to go: Mazet, Santambrogio and Scheunemann. Not really a very strong group.
As we have seen it a lot of other times before, the gap increases and increases, but with 100 km to go, at the very beginning of the 3rd hill, Scheunemann has to let go of the group. These hills are definitely not his terrain, and with him out of the group it will be an even tougher challenge for the two riders.
At this point, the gap is almost 10 minutes.
The surprising thing is that the gap is actually increasing, and to everyone's surprise it does seem like the peloton won't care much about the break. Obviously, Santambrogio was delighted with that message, and he upped the pace even more, meaning that Mazet had to let go with 55 km to go. The gap is still 11 minutes, so it's looking really, really good for the Gazetta-rider.
With 30 km to go, it's over for Scheunemann. When he couldn't hang on to the group, he almost just stopped pedalling, so it was just a matter of time before he was caught. At this point, the peloton, especially Carlsberg, has finally woken up. Santambrogio was actually virtual yellow for a second or two -- so now it's going really fast at the front.
It doesn't matter that much, though. It's way too late to catch Santambrogio, so it's only a matter of limiting his gain. He does take the victory -- after having ridden the last 55 km alone. Impressive effort by the Italian -- and yet another success for the Gazetta team.
A few km from the finish, Mazet is caught by the peloton which has really managed to gain a lot of time on the last kilometers. Here's the bunch sprint with 1 km to go. It's Ventoso in front of Barbosa and Davis.
Davis ends up winning it and by doing that, he takes the sprinters' jersey. Kashechkin also took the mountain jersey from the Ferrari-guy on today's stage while the overall classification remains unchanged in the top.
