The second week here concludes with a flat rated, but tricky stage to Palm Springs: 183km length, pure sprinters may fear the peloton pacing on those climbs halfway through the race.
If a breakaway won't take this, we still should expect a bunch sprint to happen: guys like Andriato, Mezgec or Drujon did pretty well to survive challenging profiles and should be more of favorites than Thorsen, for example.
Business as usual here, as the first 4 riders to attack form the break of the day quickly:
Craddock, Fritsch, Zaini and former KoM-leader Crane!
Zaini (+ 44.00 in GC) still has something to show here, while Crane (41pts) or Fritsch (34pts) may go for the mountain competition today..
We're already on those challenging climbs, when we see the man in yellow going down with a fall:
Eastman goes down on slicky roads, about 110km before finish! So quite early into the race. This is always horrible to see, so we just can hope, he ain't suffered an injury from this..
It's also a bad moment to go down, it seems: the peloton would start chasing the breakaway rather early and it's still surprising to see, that Eastman hasn't yet caught up to the bunch 20km after he fell!
Van Zandbeek, Wolf and English are those domestiques, who were sent back to bring Eastman back. But they struggle so far, as they're still 1'38" in arrears at this point!
In the meantime, the early escapees' advantage is down to just 6 minutes, while Crane fought his way back into the Top-3 in the KoM-classification:
The sprinter teams don't show any sign of slowing down to allow Eastman to catch up: 60km remaining and you may notice the GC-leader still desperately fighting his way back. 1'45"-disadvantage, still!
Belarusbank, Magna and Repsol are leading the peloton and the breakaway's gap is down to 4 minutes..
It's a horrible scenario for Eastman though: 25km before finish, it's becoming clear, that he will lose time today! The man in yellow now leads his teammates on his own, while the gap grows up to 2 minutes with the sprinter teams keep up their pace!
Definitely something we never wanted to see here. Kashechkin already in the virtual GC-lead by 35" on Eastman..
And with the sprint now being kicked off, it's getting even worse for Eastman, who is now already 5 minutes down on the peloton, which swallows the early escapees right in time:
Kankovsky
Racault
Speirs
Thorsen
Boaro
Drujon
Pereira
Lee
Haddou
Ewan
Aguilar
Mezgec
Sweeting
Manarelli
Andriato
Stroetinga
Nateghi
Kashechkin
Kankovsky going strong early into the sprint, as Thorsen can't follow to drop far down the rows! Speirs/Drujon, Ewan and Mezgec are right behind, while Craddock was the last escapee to hang on for a while..
Kankovsky struggles to keep his pace with the flamme rouge approaching, it's now Speirs/Drujon and Ewan leading the bunch sprint! Mezgec still behind Kankovsky, with teammate Lee showing a second acceleration, too.
Moving forward from way behind: De Ketele and Aguilar/Manarelli!
Lee and Kankovsky are fading, as Drujon kicks off this final sprint with Ewan still at this wheel!
Also Manarelli now catching up with some tremendous speed!
Ewan now going head-to-head with Drujon, while Mezgec struggles to hang on. Manarelli definitely the fastest at this point, but maybe too late..
..yes, he was: an up and coming Ewan proves his great potential by taking line honours ahead of Drujon and Manarelli! A great win for Ewan on a stage, that suits his skills quite well.
Mezgec and Aguilar round up the Top-5, while Kankovsky has to settle for 11th place today. Andriato was a non-factor as 13th today..
..but where will Eastman end up?
Incredible tough luck for the US boy today: Eastman finishes the stage off with a 6'54"-gap on the peloton! It might not have been the smartest move to support Eastman with just three rather weak domestiques, even though the team might have wanted to keep at least Stetina in the GC-contention, in case Eastman had suffered a serious injury there.
We still have to see the following days, how this crash will influence Eastman's performance, but for now, he loses his GC-lead to Kashechkin to drop down to 2nd place with a 5'36"-deficit on the Kazakh! Thanks to those two's dominance so far, he still maintains a minutes-gap on Rohregger, which might be the only good news for Heineken today.
