Final mountain stage and therefore the last realistic chance or Eastman to attack Kashechkin in the GC:
looking at the profile, this won't be too easy though. Coming at 113km length, the summit finish up "Mt Wilson" ain't too steep, so anyone aiming to gain time on rivals today, may need to attack on the HC-rated "Haines Canyon"..
A group of 5 riders went clear early and is allowed to go for the break of the day. With some mountain sprints on the menu today, the fight for the KoM might have been one interesting thrill today:
With more than 50pts up for grabs, Danacik and maybe Robov indeed could attack KoM-leader Eastman (98pts) today, but they need to take out all of the sprints plus finishing the stage ahead of the bunch!
Let's keep it short: they won't! Gaimon takes out the first two sprints, including the HC-climb halfway through the race. The breakaway maintains a 5-minutes-gap on the peloton at this point.
Camargo (GC's 18th) is the first to attack the bunch on today's toughest climb, a move which he have seen the previous day as well..
It's a quiet day so far, as neither Eastman nor anyone else tried to escape until the final 20km.. we're on the less steep finishing climb now.
The break leads by a minute on solo-chasing Camargo, who established a 3-minutes-gap on the peloton (50 riders) in the meantime..
Finally, some more action: Txurruka goes for his second attempt after a first short-lived attack a few minutes before!
He's followed by Kashechkin, Eastman, Pozzo and Di Gregorio, as we now have about 12km to go..
At the very front, Torres and Rudaskov dropped the other escapees and openend up a 40"-gap on Danacik/Gaimon with 10km remaining. Camargo still further 47" in arrears..
Back to the group of favorites, where only Di Gregorio could actually establish a notable gap on the bunch!
He's now followed by Dyball and another group with Kashechkin, Eastman, Rohregger and Txurruka..
Most notable name missing so far: Rodas (GC's 4th), who hasn't joined those latest attacks yet!
5km to go for those GC-favorites and while Di Gregorio caught up to Camargo, there's some more attempts to open up some gaps:
Eastman, Montenegro, Kashechkin and Pozzo go again, just when the bunch (28 riders) pulled this group back a few moments before!
It's a tough challenge to establish gaps though, with slopes up to just 6% those latest attackers all struggled to go for comfortable gaps on the bigger group:
Rudaskov/Torres are the only escapees to hold on to 52"-gap on the next group, where we have 11 riders alltogether again. So no luck for Di Gregorio, Camargo, Dyball or Eastman/Kashechkin. Those 11 riders are:
Kashechkin/Briceno Eastman Gaimon/Di Gregorio/Rodas Camargo Pozzo/Danacik Rohregger Montenegro
They maintain a 46"-gap on the following 25-men-group with Dyball, Agudelo, Txurruka and Stetina as the most notable names! So Dyball and Txurruka seem to suffer from their previous efforts here!
The stage will go to Rudaskov or Torres though.. the latter with a better position in the sprint..
..to take out the last mountain stage: Torres with his first showing here, beating Rudaskov at the line!
+ 1'07" for the first group with Kashechkin completing the podium and denying Eastman's minor attempts to attack his race-lead today!
+ 1'46" for the next group with Dyball, Agudelo, Doi, Txurruka and Haga! This may lead to some changes in the GC actually..
Rodas cementing his 4th, as Haga drops from 5th to 6th! Di Gregorio moves up to 9th thanks to Doi finishing in this second group. With tomorrow's 33km ITT offering a last realistic chance to attack each other, we still have a few GC-battles to follow here. Kashechkin though is on a good way to repeat his GC-win from last year, while Eastman held him off by just one point in the KoM-rankings!
Finally, some more riders had to quit the race today. And it's an interesting list: Drujon, Haddou, Clarke/Kankovsky, Sweeting and Manarelli! So with Thorsen already out yesterday, we also "lose" double stage-winner Sweeting, as well as the most consistent sprinter (Drujon), plus Belarusbank's entire sprint-train, which was so strong on the easy flat stages here!
