The queen-stage has arrived. It’s the climb to Torre, the highest point in Portuguese continental territory. Plenty of questions are expected to be answered today, first of which is: who’s going to be the last to start in tomorrow’s TT?
Again a break of four makes our front group Taborre Hatanaka Durasek Betancourt
1st Sprint
1. Betancourt
2. Durasek
3. Hatanaka
Soon enough we tackle the first climb of the day: Penhas da Saúde. A cat.1 climb which offers a bucketload of points for the KoM classification. Surprisingly (to me at least) nobody seems too interested in the front group as they pass through the summit quite peacefully:
1st KoM
1. Durasek
2. Betancourt
3. Hatanaka
4. Taborre
However in the pack things get agitated:
5. Barredo
6. O’Brien
7. Morton
It’s a little bit bizarre that none of these have any points in the KoM competition, yet all of them get immediately swallowed by the bunch. The difference to the escapees sits around 6min.
As our 2nd climb starts we can perceive the damage in pack. There are only 95 riders left there, with more than 70km to go. It’s going to be tough for some.
Atop this one though the escapees have become more ambitious. After taking the first summit Durasek attacks his companions and takes this cat. 2 climb:
1. Durasek
2. Hatanaka
3. Taborre
4. Betancourt
The peloton crest this one 4’34 after, where O’Brien attacks again to claim the last 2 points on offer. Nobody comes close to Venter’s KoM lead though, but the climb to Torre may change this. With 60km to the finish the pack has been reduced to 69 riders already.
Two important names have been left behind at this point: Lloret and Naibo
There’s a long descent ahead, so they’re supposed to make it back to the pack in order to assist their respective leaders
1st Sprint
1. Betancourt
2. Taborre
3. Hatanaka
2nd Sprint
1. Betancourt
2. Durasek
3. Taborre
With 26.6km left to race we see the riders start the final climb. The escapees have only 1’48 on the pack and it seems unlikely they’ll make it at this point. Also Lloret and Naibo weren’t able to recover, which are bad news for their teams.
Swedbank has been doing the majority of the work for dozens of kms now and in this first section of the climb they are able to commit with 3 riders in the chase.
One of the heroes of this race, Konrad seems to be waving goodbye at his GC aspirations. He’s put up a good fight though and will surely make his manager proud.
Betancourt feels he has had enough of this pacing up the mountain thing and launches the first real offensive in the front group. The pack is close already so it seems like a good decision if he his to take something out of this today. Taborre on the other hand has been dropped and is on the verge of being caught up by the peloton led by Larsson.
Entering the last 20km he has a 50’’ gap on his 2 chasers and 50’’ more to the bunch. This is one of two respite zones where the climb eases a bit and the gradient drops a lot. However it allows the minor gaps between riders to really show themselves, which shatters the peloton completely and we can see the first major casualties: Cardoso Efimkin Dahlberg Hoogerland
All lose contact with the main group, which must come as a surprise after seing Swedbank in front for so long! The main group has only 18 riders at this point where Infantino launches the first attack there
The Colombian easily reaches the 2 chasers who are now 1’20 down on Betancourt but have only 20’’ on the main group now lead by De la Fuente. Good news for Swedbank as Larsson has rescued his team leader back to the front. Great job by the swede today!
Durasek and Hatanaka are finally caught as we reach the 15km mark. Infantino keeps his advantage though. Interestingly Cataldo has been left all alone by his team mates, which might make things tough for him…
Sensing this he teams up with Nieve and they launch a combined attack!
Bibby, Úran and Cobo react a bit later and quickly reach these 2. Popovych takes a bit longer but eventually all of these join up with the previous duo.
Their gap swiftly reaches the 1min mark and it doesn’t look too good for the now leading duo of Betancourt and Infantino as we pass through the 10km banner. Behind these 2 groups it is Kangert and the Swedbank boys doing the chasing.
Bibby is the firestarter now! You’d think he would prefer to wait and chase others, giving his timetrial abilities, but instead he has chosen to be the aggressor. Úran, Popovych and Cobo promptly follow this move.
But only the first 2 can follow him!! This can be decisive if Cataldo doesn’t react quickly!
The Italian though manages to pull it together and responds a bit later as the previously mentioned trio catch our duo of escapees. Popovych looks to be weakened with all these accelerations. 5km left!
But it’s Úran’s time now! The Colombian has decided to lay down the hammer and pushes through the final kms where only his compatriot Infantino can follow him!
Cataldo is doing all the work behind but we have reached the barriers already. He doesn’t seem to be happy with the prospect of a second place and again fights back with another attack!
Bibby goes after him but the gap seems too hard to close to the front and we’re already in the last km!
And they’re not going to reach the Colombian duo where Úran shows his strength to conquer the stage and perhaps the yellow jersey too. 2nd place goes to Infantino to make another 2nd place for his team
Cataldo desperately fights to minimize his losses to finish 3rd ahead of Bibby, Popovych and Betancourt. More importantly clock registers a loss of 39'', one second short of the amount of time Cataldo could spare. That tiny second will still make the italian the last to start in tomorrow's TT but will predictably be too short for him to keep his yellow jersey.
Nieve beats his fellow Spaniard Cobo to take 7th, 1'55 later.
And only then the Swedbank group which carries Hoogerland, Kangert, Arredondo and Karpets, 3'27 after the colombian.
