The German NCs feature a flat road race, offering several premium sprinters a chance to grab the title.
We've 24 teams here, but only Karcher (5), Rothaus (5), Evonik (5) and Volkswagen (6) are lining up with more than three riders in their rosters.
With Ciolek missing, PT-sprinters like Mohs/Degenkolb (Pokerstars) and Stauff (Bpost) are considered the top-favorites. They all lack support though, except of strong man Kluge for Mohs.
Also Greipel (Privatbank) or Haussler (La Vie) are on their own, while Kupfernagel (Karcher), Zabel (Volkswagen) or Geschke (Evo) may be the ones to let their teams control the race.
A rather big group of 8 riders establishes a notable gap quickly - and we see Evonik and Karcher of those teams, which are strong in numbers:
Unfortunatelly - from a neutral point of view - there's still no huge effort to chase back in the bunch: Volkswagen as the only team showing it's colors at the front, but the gap is growing to 7-8-9 minutes as we're already in the second half of the race..
..the breakaway will take this one!
Schachmann is the first of the break trying to solo away with now just 4.5km remaining!
He opened up a small gap, but all of his former breakaway companions fight back as we're now already going into the final km:
Scheit, Bartl, Egger and Vasyliv with a slight advantage over the others, while Schachmann fights to stay in the lead..
This may become a close one: Bartl and Frohlinger as the strongest in the sprint, now catching up to Schachmann!
Scheit and Egger out of reach..
..and so is Frohlinger, as it will come down to a tight sprint between Schachmann and Bartl!
They are head-to-head with the line approaching..
And Schachmann lungs in for the victory! What a close decision, but eventually his attack from 4km outside paid off.
Tough luck for runner-up Bartl, while Frohlinger completes the podium.. the peloton did not make the time limit..
The ITT will certainly be the better opportunity for the top-rated riders: Kittel (Vesuvio), Schädlich (Rothaus) and Martin (Bouygues) as the clear favorites here.
Barth (Karcher), Fothen (Prio) or veterans like Schumacher (Swisscom) may be in the mix for at least the podium, too.
Barth sets a maybe promising best time at the half-time split:
8" ahead of early starting Müller (Rothaus) and 14" on his teammate Gerdemann..
Fothen slightly slower at half-time, 10" down on Barth!
Here comes Martin now and as soon as he crossed this split, it's pretty obvious that those names mentioned above won't challenge for the victory today:
new best time, 50" faster than Barth at this point!
Schädlich next on the road and he surprisingly struggles to put up a strong first sector here:
+ 22" on Martin!
Top-favorite Kittel certainly in better shape:
best split-time, but "just" 9 seconds faster than Martin..
Will it come down to either Kittel or Martin? Schädlich definitely quite far behind..
Martin keeps crushing the earlier competition and is 1'16" faster than Barth at the final split!
While Schädlich is definitely out of the victory-contention (crossing this split 32" slower than Martin), it's now Kittel entering the final 10km:
15" ahead of Kittel, so gaining some more seconds in the meantime!
Martin 40" faster than Schädlich at the finish, which is definitely a surprising loss for the latter. But could Martin fight back from his deficit on Kittel?
He couldn't: Kittel crosses the finish with the best time, beating Martin by 18" for the TT-title!
German NCs feature a flat road race, offering several premium sprinters a chance to grab the title.
