Interesting profile today, quite a few hilly parts and a few KOM points to be picked up, should be interesting to see if Halgand can hang onto his jersey today. The sprinters should be able to make it over the hills and with a slightly downhill finish, they're going to be quick.
The usual favourites are in contention today and their teams were in no mood to let a break of 13 go early on so they pulled them back quickly.
Obviously though there had to be a break that was given space and here it is:
Nolf (Telefonica), Halgand (Credit Agricole), Lancaster (Fed-Ex) and Visconti (Carrefour). Lancaster won the first intermediate sprint ahead of Halgand and Visconti.
After 10 kms of chasing very hard Zampieri (France TV) and Santambrogio (Gazetta) managed to bridge the gap and formed a front group of 5. Only 5 riders because Nolf found the pace too hard on the hills and was dropped.
Going over the first KOM point, Visconti wins it ahead of Halgand and Lancaster. Out of nowhere there were more escape groups on the road, they must have ridden off the front of the peleton on the climb. In it are Morabito (Switzerland), Frohlinger (Germany), Rabon (Carlsberg) and Khatuntsev (Telefonica). Just behind them Auger (Saturn) was doing a solo in front of the bunch.
Lots of attacks came within the front group of 5 with 150kms to go, wasting their energy for no reason. Zampieri came first in the second KOM point ahead of Santambrogi and Visconti. The pace increase led to Lancaster getting dropped.
Halgand won the 2nd intermediate sprint ahead of Santambrogio and Visconti. Then Zampieri won the 3rd KOM point ahead of Visconti and Santambrogio. It isn't looking good for Halgand and his jersey, he is the 2nd best climber in the group but isn't even trying to collect points.
Santambrogio won the final intermediate sprint ahead of Halgand and Visconti.
As the riders go over the final KOM point, Halgand finally gets his act into gear and collects full points ahead of Visconti and Santambrogio.
With 55kms to go the break hold an advantage of 4'50 over the peleton, it is still do-able for the break, especially since the final part is slightly downhill.
Unfortunatley for them it isn't to be. They get caught with 16kms to go and the bunch sprint is on. With no real dominant train, the relaying train has a big head-start on the sprinting trains but they won't keep that lead for long.
The Cycling24 rider in the centre is on completley the wrong wheel and goes by the name of Clerc with Ventoso on his wheel. On the far side we have the Carlsberg train with Baumann leading out Eisel. On the near side we have the FloGas train that worked so well in the previous stage, Kessler leading out Napolitano, but once again Ciolek is on his wheel (red points jersey) and Haedo on his wheel.
With 1km to go it's very tight up front:
Ciolek is just coming out of Napolitano's slipstream after Kesler did such a great job again, surely it won't be a carbon copy of the previous stage...
It's very tight but it looks to me like Napolitano has won that...and he has. Great train set up there. A couple of riders (Ardila) were dropped in the finale but they are mainly helpers. Also, Halgand is, quite frankly, an idiot. He loses his KOM jersey to Visconti. In the GC the top 35 places are still all unchanged.
