The Kazakh Championships see a colorful mix of 13 teams from around the world contesting in a tough 220km hilly road race around Taldygoran. Some clear favorites will hope for good race..
Kashechkin (Repsol), Y. Nepomnyachsniy (Milka) and Dyachenko (Cisco) will be the top-favorites for the road race and all three may also hope for having a shot at the TT-title later on.
Local team Cisco (4 riders) and Milka (3) do have some support for their leaders, so it may be up to those two teams to control the race.
Both Milka and Cisco decide to send a rider into a the first succesful breakaway attempt though:
are allowed a huge gap early into the race and we can already say, that the 15-men-bunch behind won't manage to go for a working pursuit.. it's actually a 5-men-race from now on!
So it's just following this group for 200km of "racing" and with now 20km to go, two riders try to escape from the group:
Sinelobov and Shishelov go on the attack!
And they manage to create a minute-gap, which they hold on to til the final km! Bad news for Cisco in particular, as Senyenov could have been kind of a favorite in this group (which may be the reason for his two remaining companions to not chase that hard)..
anyway, it's up to the leading duo now and Shishelov has to kick off the sprint from the leading position..
..of which Sinelobov took the benefit from to take out the Kazakh NC's road race! Senyenov completes the podium a minute later.
The bunch actually managed to finish the race, too, with Nepomnyachsniy completing the Top-5 about 40 minutes later..
A challenging timetrial (39km) with some hills to be climbed, though rated as a flat parcours.. Y. Nepomnyachsniy (Milka), Kashechkin (Repsol) and Gruzdev (Cisco) as the favorites here.
An early start for Aleks Dyachenko though may already put some pressure on those names, as he combines decent skills on short climbs and against the clock:
first notable and long lasting BT: 1h01'40"!
Dyachenko did quite well - the second split gives us a rather close race with teammate and top-favorite Gruzdev only being 1" faster..
Kashechkin crosses the split as the best, with Nepomnyachsniy being just 5" slower with less than 10km remaining..
Kashechkin keeps putting up a strong performance til the finish and he sets a new BT, 14" ahead of Dyachenko!
With top-favorite Gruzdev already too far behind at the second split (eventually finishing behind Dyachenko), it's now just Nepomnyachsniy being able to attack Kashechkin:
will he gain those 5 seconds back? He won't! He finishes 8" slower than Repsol's premium stage-racer, who takes a great TT-victory!
Kazakh Championships see a colorful mix of 13 teams from around the world contesting in a tough 220km hilly road race around Taldygoran. Some clear favorites will hope for good race..
