After yesterday’s very simple stage we get a much more complicated and hard to predict stage. Standing at a long 197.3km, the stage today also includes a big category 1 climb which offers 16 mountain points. From there the race will descend to the flat again and continue from there to the finish line.
Our first four attackers of the day et away to create the break of the day. They are: Aaron Gate Andrei Krasilnikau Vegard Breen Aleksander Aleksiev
No one seems interested in following them at all, with no riders here posing a GC threat at all. As such the gap just keeps going up and up until it reaches a stunning maximum of 11’37”. BNCR now come to the fore to steady the ship and slightly reduce things. By the time we reach the start of the climb the gap still stands at 10’44”.
Finally something starts to happen as the bunch hits the climb. Rojas Villegas hits the front. He was almost certainly supposed to be his team’s leader here but now he finds himself doing super domestique work for the race leader. He applies some serious pressure and things start to break up.
By about the half way point of the climb there are still around 60 riders left, though this does represent a fairly significant cull of the bunch. The gap to the front is 8’46” with 8.7km remaining to the summit.
The pace is fairly sedate up front and so there is still some energy for an attack when the break reaches the summit. Breen attacks with 1.5km remaining, but is it for the mountain points or for the stage win?
We will never know because Gate ensures that he doesn’t get very far. Breen leads over the top anyway with Gate in second and Krasilnikau in third.
This leaves 6 points still on offer for the next rider over. Three riders attack and over the top we get a chance to see who they are – Sarmiento, Bakhin and Masuda, who cross the top in that order.
The gap to the front riders is 7 minutes, so things are looking like they will be decided by the break. More importantly, however, all 3 of these attackers are in the big group of riders who are 1’15” down on the race leader. Over the top their time gap is almost exactly 1 minute!
The three riders must have planned this to look like they were going for the mountain points but over the top they don’t sit up at all, and instead push on with their attack.
The bunch crosses the top with 35 riders remaining in it. The only two from the top 30, apart from the attackers, who aren’t in this group are Seo and Polivoda, in 28th and 29th.
OR at least this was the case. With the pace so high on the descent it was inevitable that someone would misjudge their trajectory and Calzati, who sits in 20th overall, is just that man.
The gap from the 3 attackers grows to 1’27”, meaning that Masuda is the provisional race leader, thanks to his high positions in previous stages. BNCR is finally able to marshal their tired domestiques, who start to narrow the gap slightly.
It is all action here suddenly, as Krasilnikau attacks the break with 10km remaining.
There is a time gap update at this point – by the end of the descent BNCR have brought the gap to the attackers back to under the 1 minute mark, which means the race lead is safe. Still, if they can stay away then two of the three will move on to the podium, so the danger isn’t over yet!
As it happens, with 10km remaining for the bunch the peloton is able to reel in the three attackers. You have to respect the effort from them.
The break are still several kilometres ahead and soon pass the 5km to go banner. Krasilnikau has a 16” gap on the other three now. Can he hold on for what would be a tremendous victory?
Unfortunately for him, with 2km to go Gate brings him back into the group and things are set for a four-man sprint.
The sprint opens and it appears that Krasilnikau still has something left in the tank as he breaks to the right. Aleksiev opens the sprint on the left of the group.
Krasilnikau fades very quickly, and will have to be content with 4th. Gate starts to challenge Aleksiev, who has opened up an early lead.
With just 50 metres remaining they are neck-and-neck!
And Aaron Gate is able to continue a tremendous race for Cadbury! Aleksiev holds off Breen to take second, while Krasilnikau is fourth.
The bunch sprint comes in and Moreno just beats Eibegger to take fifth. This is enough points for Moreno to pull on the points jersey at the end of today. He would rather be pulling on the yellow but will have to be content with this.
Parra Bustamente, Jang, Dyrnes and Naibo round out the top ten for the day. There is no major change at the top of the GC. Rusli keeps his mountain jersey but he is tied with Sarmiento in that competition and tomorrow will certainly decide who gets to take it home. Weirdly, Breen has picked up a lot of points in his two breaks and so moves into second in the green jersey competition.
