This is the only "hilly" stage of the tour and quite frankly it's a bit of a stretch to call it hilly. Nonetheless it is classified so and the favourites we have today are Vicioso, Sinkewitz, and Zberg.
On to the stage then and we did have a breakaway but they were caught at the first sprint. Soeiro and Swift managed to take 1st and 2nd places inspite of being caught and Casper took 3rd.
Swift then attacked again and this time he was joined by Cassidy. Others have attacked behind and have formed little groups along the road. They don't manage to bridge up before the first KOM sprint and Cassidy won that ahead of Swift and Matzbacher in the 2nd group.
Just before the 2nd KOM point the front group contains 12 riders, Caethoven, Cassidy, Swift, Dean, Reckweg, Mortensen, Arango, Costagli, Matzbacher, Lejman, Txurruka and Soeiro. Lejman managed to grab maximum points at the KOM point and Cassidy and Txurruka came 2nd and 3rd.
With 80kms to the finish Del Nero attacks from the peleton. Unfortunately for him he gets away and does a 70km solo between the peleton and front group before getting caught, rendering his attack pointless. More bad news is that Sinkewitz gets dropped with 85kms left of the stage and never makes contact again.
Lejman won the 3rd KOM sprint ahead of Txurruka and Matzbacher. At this point (35kms to go) the break has a 4'20" advantage so there is a very real possibility of a breakway win here. They make it to the 2nd intermediate sprint of the stage and Soeiro wins ahead of Caethoven and Swift.
With 12kms to the finish our front group of 12 has shrunk down to 6 and the lucky 6 are Cassidy, Soeiro, Txurruka, Dean, Reckweg and Caethoven. These guys have a 3'20" advantage so they will make it, the question is will they make it to the finish together and which one of them will win?
At the top of the final hill, Caethoven has a gap! He's managed to get away from those behind him and with only 5kms left he has a great chance if he can keep those riders behind him, due to his sprinting capabilities.
With 2km to go Caethoven is still in the lead and he has Txurruka and Dean both soloing behind him. None of these 3 riders are sprinting, Txurruka has no chance even if he does sprint, but Dean does due to him being a better sprinter.
Caethoven wins! A perfectly timed effort gives him the win, it seems as though Txurruka and Dean were content with their podium places not to challenge him, or maybe they couldn't of course because Reckwig, Cassidy and Soeiro did sprint and managed to close the gap to Dean who also bridged the gap to Txurruka. Anyway Caethoven takes the lead in the GC and has a great chance of keeping it right to the end.
