Possibly the hardest stage of the year! 6 big mountains and the same amount of smaller but not much easier climbs. There is actually not a single flat kilometer today.
So where else but in Colombia this route could have been decided?
Colombia, the country, most known for their mountain goats in cycling.
Milka the clear favourite here with Uran and Henao. Poor Forero, who surely had hoped for a sprint finish as he belongs to the very rare non climbers.
But also other teams have huge climbers like Duarte, Pedraza, Serpa, Suaza, Ardila, Agudelo etc. Lots of those even have some support. In especially Repsol could try to control this race with 6 riders!
Not even at the first climb and 9 riders try to get into the breakaway. Not the biggest favourites yet.
But Milka does not allow this. Forero on the descent and Henao now on the climb pull them back. They surely will try to deliver Uran the leader jersey.
6 riders immediately try again and this time it seems as if they can create a gap:
Anacona (Volkswagen)
Casas (Pendletons)
Sarmiento (Evian)
Tamayo Martinez (PFG)
Diaz Corrales (ING)
Becerra (WWE)
Milka can`t contol the race for the full distance. But as also no Repsol rider is in the breakaway you would expect them to share the work. But instead the gap goes up to over 20min with 140km to go. Do they really don`t want to do anything?
Coming on top of the 3rd big mountain, they have a 36min gap. Almost sure those six will decide the race now.
But at least a sign by the peloton.
Suaza (Bouygues) and Agudelo (Repsol) with an attack but no Milka rider follows. 80km for the duo. 50km!! for the breakaway. An incredible gap of 50min already! The peloton is soon to be lapped!
Damn. Very bad luck for Tamayo Martinez. He crashed and is behind the breakaway now. There might go his dream of winning the NC.
Being on the last bigger climb, the pace obviously is pretty high and we see a huge selection in the breakaway.
Sarmiento a bit ahead of Anacona with Becerra and Diaz Corrales further behind. Salas and Tamayo Martinez won`t be able to come back.
4km left and still some gaps. Becerra really fighting from behind now having already passed Anacona and coming closer to Sarmiento, who still has the lead.
But no chance. Sarmiento was able to keep the gap until the end and even extend it a bit. Huge win for Evian here in the Colombian NC taking the road title surprisingly.
Becerra with a strong 2nd ahead of Anacona.
Suaza btw. the last finisher today as also Agudelo was over the time limit.
Favourite for the time trial is Uran (Milka). But we have some riders who could be able to surprise here. Many riders want to show themselves after their disappointing performance in the Roads.
Suaza (Bouygues) as first time trialist.
Duarte (Venchi) and Casas (Pendleton`s) as next. Those three will surely be the biggest opponents for Uran. But is anybody able to beat him?
Clever Uran!
Perfectly timed team work here as he got support by one of his team mates.
So this makes it more obvious now. Of course nobody is able to beat Uran and so the Milka rider gives the Czech team one more National jersey. Congrats.
