Last day in Canada and we're heading West Vancouver for the concluding TTT. The 18km flat parcours probably won't allow to attack race leader amador, who's 1'40" ahead of roglic in the gc. But there's still some valuable points up for grabs: the stage win itself, the fight for 2nd in the gc (roglic just 3 seconds ahead of nazaret), the podium fight (nazaret just 23 seconds ahead of 4th shikai).
Speaking of the stage win, the top favorites should definitely be team ubs and generali, so in fact, the top-2 in the gc.
generali - edf with an early start and of course, that's already an indicator, of which time you will have to beat today. The team comes definitely with the best ttt setup and with roglic aiming to defend his impressive 2nd place in the gc, there's no excuse to not deliver today.
Coming to the first split, generali obviously sets the best time: 13'08".
eritel - sonatrach with an early start as well and while a stage-win is probably not to be expected, there's still a chance for kudus to improve his 7th place in the gc today. No easy challenge, but the team is looking quite strong on the first sector:
+ 9" on generali for the provisional 2nd best time at the split!
team ubs as probably the biggest challenger for generali and while amador only have to avoid any unexpected drama today, the team may actually hope to somehow upset the overwhelming favorite generali:
+ 11" as 3rd at the first split though..
indosaat and intxausti may still hope to help intxausti moving up to the top-5 in the gc today. He would have to gain half a minute on úran and of course manage to hold of kudus, who's 18 seconds down in the gc:
+ 19" at the first split, which is the 4th best time right now. But it's also 10 seconds slower than eritel, so kudus is putting some pressure on intxausti!
minions and úran with some serious troubles in the first sector and looking at their time at the split, it looks like úran will struggle to defend his 5th in the gc:
+ 53" and so pretty far behind intxausti and kudus!
meiji also not going too strong, so shikai may have a hard time to attack the gc podium that way:
+ 38" at the split and now waiting for berg cycles performance..
berg cycles and nazaret with a much better first sector! And that's good news for nazaret, who's 23 seconds ahead of gc's 4th shikai and looks set to at least defend his podium result. Obviously, he will struggle to attack gc's 2nd roglic (3 seconds to gain!) though:
+ 15" as 4th in the first sector!
As to be expected, generali on the way to take the stage, but there's a strong eritel squad giving them a challenge. Also ubs and berg cycles with some solid performances so far and indosat is putting some real pressure on minions/úran!
Solid first sector for mol/ratiy and euskaltel/van den broeck, but given the performance from berg cycles and azteca (+ 0.35), those gc contenders won't move up in the gc's top-10 today.
mol-omv petrom still with quite a strong performance eventually, as they finish as "best of the rest":
22'44" for a provisional best-time and so ratiy (gc 13) may at least improve a spot or two in the gc!
generali setting a new best time soon though. No surprise. The actual surprise though is, that the stage-hunting team dropped roglic in the process!
22'22" for generali at the finish..
+ 24" for roglic eventually! That ain't the perfect deal for roglic, who surely would have preferred to finish alongside his teammates, but he obviously hadn't the best day after his efforts in yesterday's mountain stage. Given the split times from berg cycles/nazaret, he will now have to hope that his finishing time will be enough to defend his 2nd in the gc.
eritel and kudus did better in the second sector and what a performance this has been:
+ 4" at the finish! Quite an impressive show and with kudus amongst those guys, he will surely have a chance to improve his 7th place in the gc!
ubs also wth a better time than generali in the second sector, but they have to settle for 3rd at the finish so far:
+ 5" and the gc win for amador is sealed!
intxausti and his team finish soon after:
+ 24" as provisional 5th behind generali, eritel, ubs and mol. A solid time, but it ain't enough for intxausti to hold off kudus in the gc! The Eritrean made up his 18 seconds deficit and will definitely move up at least one place in the gc.
Not one, but two! úran and his minions as one of the worst teams today and they finish more than minute slower than kudus and intxausti:
+ 1'26" as actually the worst time of all 18 teams! Quite a bummer for úran, who will drop to 7th in the gc!
shikai and his meiji team also amongst the slowest teams:
+ 56" and so there's no chance to attack gc's 3rd nazaret. Still, shikai's 4th in the gc looks save.
And now for fight between roglic and nazaret! 3 seconds seperated the duo in the gc and while roglic (as gc's 2nd) would have easily defended his spot, if he had finished with his team, he eventually lost 24 seconds in generali's run to the stage-win..
nazaret finishes safely with his guys, just like gc's 10th chiarello and marquez (who loses a second eventually).. but will berg cycles be strong enough to help him attack roglic?
+ 17" as 4th on the stage! And yes, that's enough for nazaret to surprisingly go past roglic in the gc!
As said before, the stage-win goes to generali - edf, who struggled in the last third of the stage though. Losing roglic in the process certainly ain't good news, but for now, the stage-win counts.
And what counts most, is the overall winner of the tour of vancouver 2017: andrei amador! The top favorite delivered big time, winning the gc by almost two minutes on a very strong nazaret and roglic, who still has less reasons to be sad today: he had a stage-win yesterday and a gc podium in vancouver surely ain't something to worry about.
A pretty dominating showing from amador though, who also takes the points and mountain classifications. In addition to his two stage-wins and holding the yellow jersey for 7 days, this is going to be huge race in his fight for the pct crown. Congratulations.
shikai a strong 4th in the gc and therefore taking the u25 classification for the second consecutive time. Fully deserved, as he rode pretty impressive mountain stages (with rather late, but strong moves).
kudus completing the top-5 then! A huge day for his team today, the eritrean eventually finishes 2 seconds ahead of intxausti and half a minute on 7th úran. The latter two won't be happy with their gc results here, as they clearly must have aimed for the podium. They both had their struggles in yesterday's mountain stage and úran obviously hadn't the needed support in today's terrible ttt.
marquez (8th) and chiarello (10th) completing a stunning gc result (and the team's classification) for berg cycles, who got another top-20 finisher with bartl (17)! And while the team delivered big time in the gc, they might have hoped for a stage-win by silvestre in the sprints.
eastman a solid and rather quiet 9th in the gc then. brenes (11) adds some good points for indosat, ratiy (12) and van den broeck (13) with some decent results as well. Notable gc results also for gilanipoor (14) and shirota (16), while martinez (15) completes the top-15 as another strong domestique for the big guns.
costagli (19), samwel (24) and ji (39) as the biggest disappointments in the gc. Especially ji, who might have hoped to improve his 17th place from last season, never really found his game here.
shikai presenting his u25 leader shirt, eventually finishing 24 seconds ahead of kudus, who had two strong stages today and yesterday. eastman as 3rd never really looked like he could become a threat for those two.
And that's it for the tour of vancouver 2017, which has yet again delivered some thrilling decisions and a well deserved winner. We hope you enjoyed the race.
