The first leg of the race is set to be completed today; the last stage before we hit the mountains. We have had three sprint stages and three different winners = De Fauw, Serebriakov and Avelino, who took the leader’s jersey yesterday. He will hope to aim for another stage win on today’s stage.
The attacks are started by a familiar face, as Irakli Bablidze (Bouygues) starts things off. He was in the break on stage 2.
Several more riders attempt to follow him:
Cornelius Van Ooijen (Bintang)
Patrick Schelling (Cisco)
Janier Alexis Acevedo (Repsol)
And also:
Hillary Kiprotich (Kenya Airways)
However, five is deemed to be too many so the pace increases and Saldarriaga (ING) drags Kiprotich back. The peloton then slows down and allows the four others to go away and form our break of the day.
Interestingly, Castano (ING) is seen on the front of the peloton. After his crash yesterday, the team has obviously decided to put everything on Kip getting a stage win today. ING are assisted by Prio-Porto in doing a lot of the early work.
The gap hits a maximum of 4’49” before these same teams start to work a little harder. But before the break is caught, there is an intermediate sprint. With 53km to go their gap is at 2’56” as Acevedo leads them through, with Schelling in a close second and Bablidze in third. This puts Bablidze only 4” back in the young riders’ jersey, though it is held by his teammate Locatelli so it isn’t that important for him.
Meanwhile Prio-Porto really increase the pace and they have almost their whole team on the front.
There is some real fighting amongst the break as the gap tumbles. Schelling is dropped from the front group.
Schelling manages to recover, however, but all trust is gone from this group and with 20km to go the gap is down to only 24”. However, this is very early to make the catch and so the fight goes out of the peloton. No one wants to chase and as everyone looks at each other the gap grows back out to almost a minute! This is far from over!
Or so it seems, as Mendes ups the pace and pretty much makes the catch on his own with 14km remaining on this final criterium circuit. Avelino will breathe a sigh of relief.
With the catch made there is nothing to prevent the big guns from sprinting it out against each other in the intermediate sprint which occurs with only 11.5km to the line. Here it is Serebriakov who takes the valuable seconds, ahead of Weylandt and then Avelino. This puts Serebriakov and Avelino completely equal on time!
ING seem to have a brilliant train in place today. They have Kip in a great position and with 7.5km remaining there are 5 other men in front of him. The other teams will have to get their act together to get anything competitive up front.
But with 4km remaining there is some real competition. Prio-Porto have a train set up with Mendes on the front. Weylandt has tagged in behind the yellow jersey of Avelino. And looking to their left the ING train still has four men. Or at least it should, but Kip is out of place!
A kilometre later and ING still haven’t recovered, as they drop back to make sure Kip gets back on to the train. But on the left of the road Hollister have Monsalve leading out Brea with Serebriakov tagged on to the back of this small train.
Cano is once again placed well on Weylandt’s wheel and Ghafari sits behind him. With 2km to go the Prio trainis well ahead and all the trains are down to their final lead-out man. Thire has managed to bring Kip back a little bit but there is still work to do. Popov has latched onto Serebriakov’s wheel.
Avelino is forced to go for a long sprint as Caldeira fades away. He is looking good but Weylandt is still on his wheel and Thire is putting in a huge lead-out effort.
And under the kite Weylandt comes off Avelino’s wheel, and Cano in turn comes around Weylandt. Both are looking quick. Could they cause the big upset here today? De Fauw is also around to try to put his mark here.
With 700m to go Weylandt hits the front. But is he strong enough to hold off Cano and stay ahead of Avelino?
Avelino starts to fade but wait! Kip is recovering! Sprinters are fanned out right across the road!
And out of nowhere Kip takes the sprint victory! What a comeback after his train had all those troubles!
Serebriakov comes through in second, having been lead-out perfectly. Weylandt holds on for third and Popov puts in a gutsy 4th. Cano once again reaches 5th and Chafari takes 6th. Avelino will be gutted with a 7th, while De Fauw, Vesely and once again Pineau round out the top 10.
And Serebriakov’s second place is enough to take back the yellow jersey, even if he stands no chance of holding on to it tomorrow. He also extends his lead in the points competition, which he should be able to hold for a little while until the mountain climbers face a few stages.
