The favourites did shuffle the GC to their favour yesterday. And before the 4 consecutive mountain stages start, here the last flat rated stage of the race already. This time with some climbing in between and a slightly climbing last kilometers. Let`s see who has saved enough energy after yesterdays effort.
3 riders in the breakaway: Avancini Cassidy Biondo
Cassidy is the only rider with a single KoM point already. Though he can`t gain any more struggling against the others. Dan Martin though stays on top keeping the jersey for at least another day.
Cat.3
Biondo
6
Avancini
4
Cassidy
2
Sprint
Cassidy
6
Biondo
4
Avancini
2
Some serious looking around going around in the peloton and the pace dropped for a moment. There was a crash of 7 riders apparently and race radio only mentioned 1 team leader as also 1 abandon.
Some moments later the confirmation: Chamorro was the team leader, who was in yesterdays first group.
Other crash victims were Luis Mas, Khalikikhosroshani or Edwin Parra Bustamante. Latest is injured and needs to abandon.
13km ahead of the finish, it`s another sprint. Avancini wins but no fight here as they all still want the stage win due to a 1'30 gap.
Sprint
Avancini
6
Cassidy
4
Biondo
2
6km left and still a 1min gap. This is going to be close. The pace is extremely high, which is bad news for Chamorro as well, who is chasing the peloton solo. 2min gap for him though...
Cassidy attacks and tries to surprise his two companions
With 3km he still has a gap but the duo from behind is coming closer again.
The peloton struggles to close the gap. The sprinters would need to to go early but instead Petit is still sitting behind Silva who isn`t a good enough engine to go fast enough.
Silva
Petit
Haidar Anuawar
Caldeira
Bennett
Cardoso
Keough
Forero
Appollonio
Sutton
1,4km and still a gap but also Cassidy is caught now being in a bad position.
The sprint behind is weird as the pure sprinters seem to struggle after the climbing. So it`s the punchier guys in the pole positions such as Cardoso, Gallopin or Pozdnyakov. Surprisingly also Castaneda finally shows himself behind them.
700m and Cassidy looks beaten. Avancini and Biondo still fight while the gap to the peloton is melting.
Casaneda takes the lead in the peloton! But the finish line is closing.
And while the gap was closed, it was not enough to beat the duo.
Avancini with a great win ahead of Biondo.
Third for Sutton, who now did in three times in a row on sprinter stages. Speirs, Caldeira and Cataneda next while the bigger names did take a day off it seems.
Bad luck for Chamorro, who though reduced his loss at least to 2'22, which means, he seems to be alright after a long solo ride on that high pace. Though this means, that Meintjes has a big advantage now over him in the U25 ranking.
Surely the team will have to argue later today, why no team mate was sent back to support him.
Unfortunately PCM decided to not export the results. So here only a bit of it.
