Hello from Sobótka where this years National Championships of Poland are held. In total we've got 13 riders that came here to contest of which the semi-Polish team of Barca brought the most with 5. They surely would love to win here with one of them. Only Team Live Nation of the other teams is here with more than one rider.
Vesuvio
Barca
Project 1t4i
Maciej Paterski
Gracjan Lejman
Rafal Majka
Adam Pierzga
Kamil Gradek
Konrad Dabkowski
Krzysztof Marchewka
Nutresa
Live Nation
Simply
Michal Golas
Jaroslaw Dabrowski
Maciej Bodnar
Mateusz Taciak
La Vie Claire
Privatbank
Piotr Mazur
Maciej Ulanowski
We kick of with the timetrial. Despite having the most riders here Barca's strongest timetrialer Kamil Gradek isn't among the top favourites. He'll even have trouble to get on the podium. A close fight between Bodnar and Mazur will be expected for the win, with the rider of Simply given the bigger chances. Then we'll also have to mention Taciak, who is the best of the rest behind them on paper.
As expected Gradek sets the first mentionable mark, taking over the leading spot from his team mate Marchewka by 45 seconds in 1h10'57", but three more are to come and looking at the split times so far we can expect them to go past Gradek.
The first of them is Taciak with a new best time of 1h10'22".
But everyone is waiting for the big favourites and the first one Mazur doesn't disappoint. He puts another 1'21'' into Taciak's time. Now we only have to wait for Bodnar and looking at the splits it can be close.
Here he comes. In the end it wasn't that big of a margin between the two, but Bodnar is the deserved winner of this years Polish championships by 11 seconds. Congrats to Simply Red Bull.
The road race will be decided on a hilly course with an uphill finish. Biggest favourites will be Paterski and Lejman, but of course only if not a break is far ahead on the road to determine the winner among themselves like we've seen in plenty of championships this week.
Gradek initializes the first attack. He is followed by Mazur. These two will be the only ones to form the days break. That isn't a good outlook for everyone in the peloton as the only team that has the manpower to catch the break is represented in it.
And indeed behind there is no initiative whatsoever. As the entire pack happily slows down to let a fan make a nice picture of them. With 20 kilometres to go the leading duo is 17 minutes ahead.
Soon the calmness changes, as top favourite Paterski decides that an attack would change his mood and so he soon finds himself together with Majka 1 minute ahead of the peloton. This won't have an influence on the national champion though as they are still more than 10 kilometres behind.
Ahead Mazur opened the sprint with 1,5 km to go but still struggles to get a gap between himself and his companion who is just riding along.
Soon later Gradek decided that it is enough and started to sprint and from then on there wasn't a doubt that he'd win as he soon passed Mazur, who will be frustrated after the nationals, coming home with two close 2nd places.
Congrats to Barca, who could get the road race in their almost home nationals.
Besides these two noone would finish the race.
