The 192 brave men at the start mustn’t have slept knowing what was waiting for them. For the 4th time ever, the riders will face 8000 meters of accumulated height around the circuit in the cold Vaduz, Liechtenstein. The cyclists will in fact climb the short, yet damn steep variant of the Triesenberg for 13 times, to finish off facing the complete one, which is even steeper, touching 23% gradients near the finish line. It could be that some rain will fall at some point on the race, hopefully that won’t put the riders’ safety at risk with a view to the descent.
The time everyone has been looking forward to has finally come: it’s time to set off! A bunch of riders soon try to escape from the pack: the 9-riders group includes: Anguilet Bablidze Berdos Hoelgaard Hughes Iturria Kung Pirazzi Rajala
However, the group won’t allow the 9 of them to break away. Soon a new attempt comes to life. Hoelgaard, Hughes and Rajala, who tried their luck previously, are joined by Vervaeke to form a group of 4.
Nonetheless, as the riders reach the top of the Triesenberg and get ready for the descent, the peloton fills the gap. Look at how nasty that looks, that’s exactly what I was talking about! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…
No one is risking too much downhill, therefore the next attempt, which also is the good one, is formed during the 5 flat, interlocutory kilometers. At first, 6 riders make it up, and they are Anguilet, Antunes, Blikra, Danacik, Rajala and Tschopp.
But as we approach the climb for the second time today, Anguilet and Rajala can no longer hang in and get caught by the pack. The 4 escapees will now try to get as much advantage as they can, seeing how the group is not pulled by anyone.
Fast forward 20 kilometers and they indeed have built a good lead. The 4 of them are now delighted to hear their gap has risen to 10’. The pack is still taking it easy but that will soon change.
Pendleton’s David Rosch breaks away from the pack! The German has some decent skills when it comes to climbing, and he will need to show them if he wants to bridge the 10’ gap that divides him and the BotD.
Rosch is not the only one desiring to follow the break as it seems, and fellow mountain goat Serrano jumps on the bandwagon.
The two are strong enough for Red Bull and Vesuvio to get in the front.
Since Rosch caught the men in the front, sooner than expected, he is the only one relaying, no one is helping him. 130 kilometers to go now.
The Spaniard also joins the cause 20 kilometers later.
Spilak’s domestiques are now in the front laying down a faster pace. Now that we’re well halfway through the race, the gap is now down to 7 minutes.
With 75 to go, no teams are really pulling the peloton anymore. Vesuvio is setting the pace but their domestiques are probably keeping something back for later on.
The break could well be made up of 2 and it wouldn’t make a difference at all. Rosch and Serrano are the only ones taking it over.
The tempo they are keeping is fast enough to drop 2 of the riders. Antunes and Danacik had a good reason not to relay as it seems, they just can’t stick with the other riders’ wheels and they give in. They are just waiting to be caught by the pack.
During the last passage on the Triesenberg, the pack stirred itself, and they bridged quite some of the gap the breakaway has built up.
A side effect is that a lot of riders were unpredictably dropped by staying in the second half of the peloton. The main chasing group with most of the favourites is just made up of 32 after that a good 50 riders slipped behind, and 8 riders in particular have lost contact; they are: Velits, Martin, Kritskiy, Cattaneo, Morton, Ratiy, Ji and Fothen. These riders may have to say goodbye to their top 10 chances but the gap is not yet wide enough to affirm that they can’t get back on.
One of the dropped riders’ group
The main bunch; most of the favourites are comfortably in the second half of the peloton
The pack is still going crazy fast now that quite some teams have decided to put their gregarios in the front. Indeed, soon after, the breakaway gets caught! 40 kilometers to go now.
The race exploded with 25 kilometers to go! The big favourite Andy Schleck wants to find out how the others are feeling today and just launches a ‘test’ attack. A brilliant Cunego is the first one to counter while Madrazo is still attentively at the head of the group.
At the moment there are only 11 riders at the head of the race, and also thanks to Schleck’s move, Denifl got dropped. Bad news for Volkswagen’s DS.
Sicard responds! This one looks to be a more serious attack though, and a careful yet strong looking Henao closes on him. The Colombian is awake to everything today and he countered to some less interesting attacks before; he should try to avoid wasting his energies in this way.
Schleck unleashes a powerful attack now! Cunego is the only one to go on his wheel this time around.
The others are taking turns to go after them but apparently, the Luxembourgish has quite some left in the tank, and he should, seeing he still needs to face the long variant of the climb, possibly helped by Cunego!
As we’ve faced the infamous descent for the last time, a part of the chasers’ group lose the front’s wheels being caught off guard by a sudden acceleration by Sicard, who hasn’t given up going after last year’s top 2. These riders are Spilak, Madrazo, Nibali, Marquez and Duarte.
The situation is unclear at the moment so here’s something that will hopefully make it clearer:
Yet, that won’t be enough for the gap to decrease, and the escapees get it up to 25”. Meanwhile, Nibali and Marquez have caught up with the 4 main chasers, while Guldhammer got dropped.
Stupidly/strangely enough Madrazo and Spilak haven’t made a move yet. They will need to have a super last climb if they want to even podium it now…
However something unexpected soon happens! Andy Schleck doesn’t want Cunego to suck his wheel any longer and he just shakes him off.
You can’t even say that the Italian was caught off guard, Schleck is just too strong today! We haven’t even got onto the last climb yet and look at what’s going on with 10 to go…
At the feet of the climb, the chasers’ group reunited. They are again in ten now but have about 1 minute from Schleck and 25” from Cunego.
Not the day for Madrazo, Spilak and Nibali. They get dropped again just when the gradients get steeper.
Ahead there they can now see Cunego, who is now just in the phase of preserving his energies.
Sicard and Dombrowski have an edge over the others, and they are the first to reach Cunego and now make up an interesting group of 3.
Schleck is on another planet today and he just keeps on gaining. This year’s Giro winner now has a safe advantage of 2 minutes on the 3 right behind him, and almost 3 minutes on the Spanish-speaking trio behind them.
With less than 4 kilometers to go the latter are still gaining on the much more valued group made up by Madrazo, Spilak and Nibali.
The 3 right behind Schleck have probably already said goodbye to the victory but now need to focus on increasing their edge over the Spanish-speaking trio. They still have 1’ over them.
Andy Schleck got now under the Flamme Rouge! Even if he wanted to, looks like he couldn’t be able of taking it easy!
Cunego, Dombrowski and Sicard also get past the flamme rouge. Right after them, there’s the group of 7 and the usual suspects in it. Henao and Alarcon opened a small gap between them and the rest, even though it wouldn’t seem so looking at the pic below.
…but Andy Schleck has already crossed the finish line after 8h16m of pain, it’s finally time for him to realize what he has accomplished today! It’s hard for him to raise his hands to the air, seeing how the climb keeps on going even after the finish line but sure enough, he is proud of himself.
Meanwhile, Sicard has dropped the other 2 and looks strong to take a 2nd place that would go beyond every single expectation. There still are 500, everlasting meters for him to climb and look at how nasty those seem…!
Dombrowski also looks stronger than Cunego. The young American may also take an even more surprising 3rd place. No one would have probably predicted such a podium.
Madrazo also caught up with Alarcon and Henao and seems to have something more in the tank. It would seem that the 2 right in the front of them are closing the gap they’ve accumulated from Sicard but everything is relative which such slopes.
As for the last 2 positions of the top 10, Spilak looks to be the fresher, while Marquez may have used up his energies as he keeps slipping behind and visibly suffering.
The podium is completed, and after 2 years, Cunego won’t stand on it. In fact, nothing changed since the last update, and Sicard will be much delighted to know himself as the runner-up, and so will do Dombrowski, settling for 3rd. Cunego conducted an almost perfect race, but he just missed something in the final stages.
Madrazo on the other hand just didn’t live up to the expectations and will cross the line in 5th. Henao is 6th, Alarcon 7th.
Nibali finishes off an underwhelming race in 8th after giving the impression of being able of achieving a better result.
Coming 5’ after the winner, the top 10 is closed by an even more disappointing Spilak, who comes in 9th, and one of today’s biggest surprises, Duarte, happily taking a 10th. Marquez had a really nice race as well, and his team should be satisfied about it, but he probably didn’t administrate his energies too well, struggling a lot in the final kilometers.
An unlucky Kritskiy comes in 12th, after having to deal with a flat tire halfway through the race and thus needing to get back on himself, first by joining the first group of dropped riders, then by trying to climb at its own pace. In the background you can also notice that Guldhammer came in 13th. The Dane tried to limit the damage on the last climb after being in a really good position at the feet of it.
Velits, rumoured as a possible top 5er, just comes in 14th. He was a bit in the same situation of Kritskiy but he surely was weaker than him; in fact the Slovakian just couldn’t hang in with the pace Schleck was imposing uphill and he got dropped.
Behind him come Majka, Kohl and Kirsch.
Denifl takes it easy and completes a horrible day being overtaken by Agudelo, coming from far behind, in the final meters. The Austrian will have to take a negatively unexpected 19th.
Other riders are still coming but it’s time for today’s hero Andy Schleck to enjoy his win! This has been a race he’ll hardly forget, congratulations!
