The stage start in Bilbao, the largest city in Basque Country with a metropolitan population of a little more that 1 million people. From here heading west into the Cantabrian Mountains with finish on Alto de los Machucos.
A very hard mountain stage, where we are going to pass 6 rather hard mountain, and this is just a prelude for todays main piece, the scary Alto de los Machucos composed of several sections all reaching the 20% level, with downhill or false flat sectors in between making for an unusual uneven climbing experience.
Temperature at 31°C, sun and little wind.
The Race
Bilbao:
Lemus Davila opens the stage on front of Novardianto, Sakalou, Warchol and Bongiorno
Over the next 30 km group after group will attack from the peloton, expanding the breakaway to 32 riders. van der Hugenhaben Edet Godoy, Kuss Lopez (GC 21, U25 2nd) Sakalou, Sergis Hacecky (KoM 6) Poljanski, Shapira Bongiorno (GC 23) Vuillermoz Kruijswijk (GC 18) Tratnik Latour, Carpenter, Sequera Iturria (GC 24) Brenes, Warchol (GC 28, KoM 4) Le Court, Owen, Novardianto Pedrero, Roson Vasyliv (GC 19) Declerq Mai, Lemus Davila, Kenyeres, Burghardt, Varga
The first 45 km of the race have been quite flat, and the huge breakaway has created a gap of 8’30”.
Up to this point we have seen Danacik, Kalaba, Kuznetsov, Prasad and Vlasov burning calories in front of the pack.
Now they are at the 5.5 km “Alto de la Escrita”, Warchol attacked for the KoM from 1.1 km but was closed down, and the Cat.3 goes to Owen in front of van der Hugenhaben and Novardianto.
Prasad leads the pack up the first climb.
The breakaway reaches the 2nd climb Alto de Ubal with 8’01”, Iturria setting the pace.
From 600 meters Hacecky opens the KoM sprint.
The late attack was fruitful, Hacecky takes the KoM sprint in front of teammate Poljanski and Shapira
Again mainly Prasad leading the pack up the Alto de Ubal.
The breakaway passes the points sprint unaffected by the fact that it was there, and start the Collado del Asón, with relatively easy slopes but 11.5 km long.
The breakaway has 7’12 and contains many very fine climbers, a break like this can be very hard for the favorite teams, so let’s take a look at some of the best climbers here, if the stage should end in a breakaway win, the favorites word be: Brenes, Bongiorno, Lopez, Hacecky, Godoy, Latour, Poljanski, Vasyliv, Iturria, Mai
Iturria leading the break on the first and hardest 5 km of the climb, then Sakalou takes over.
In a small village before the last 2 km ramp of 5%, Iturria attacks, opening a 15” gap.
Iturria takes the KoM in front of Godoy, Kruijswijk, Latour, Brenes
Poljanski and Shapira loses 32” on the climb.
Novardianto, Owen, Roson, Sakalou, Sergis, Tratnik, van der Hugenhaben, Varga, Vuillermoz and Warchol more than a minute
The pack at 7’34”
In the pack again Prasad leading at the climb, but after some km he swings of and now is up to Moser – Sygic with mainly Danacik pulling. At the last 6 km Hamilton and Schultz takes the lead.
Starting the 2nd cat.2 climb Puerto de Alisas, the situation is:
Leading: Bongiorno, Brenes, Carpenter, Declerq, Edet, Godoy, Hacecky, Iturria, Kruijswijk, Latour, Lopez, Mai, Pedrero, Poljanski, Sequera, Shapira, Tratnik, van der Hugenhaben and Vasyliv
At 55” Le Court, Lemus Davila, Novardianto, Sergis, Varga and Warchol
At 1’19” Burghardt, Kenyeres, Kuss, Owen, Roson, Sakalou and Vuillermoz
At 7’46” pack 90 riders.
Declerq lead the breakaway the first 2 km of the climb, then Tratnik with a short turn, followed by Pedrero, the attack comes from Godoy, with Bongiorno and van der Hugenhaben quick to get on the wheel.
They get a gap of 30” and with 2 km to the top Bongiorno decides to take the lead.
As the gap continues to grow Pedrero and behind him Iturria accelerates from the larger breakaway group.
Godoy takes the KoM in front of Bongiorno, van der Hugenhaben, Pedrero and Iturria
Pack at 7’22
The leading trio makes it to the bottom of the climb with 1’12”, but on the flat sector leading up to the 2nd points sprint in the village of Entrambasaguas, the gap decreases. Bongiorno wins the sprint but the pursuit is at just 11”.
Things have shuffled some over the KoM and the downhill, the pursuit soon to catch the trio is:
Brenes, Carpenter, Hacecky, Iturria, Kruijswijk, Latour, Lemus Davila, Lopez, Mai, Pedrero, Poljanski, Sequera, Tratnik, Vasyliv and Warchol
At 2’38” Declerq, Edet, Le Court, Novardianto, Sergis and Shapira
Everyone else reeled into the now fast pack, 75 riders at 5’39, 43 km left.
Working hard in the pack on the downhill and flat was mainly Miller, Carthy, Guerreiro and Bayly.
Bongiorno, Warchol and Godoy shares the workload, in the breakaway. Sequera and Tratnik dropped.
With 800 meters to the top, Godoy attacks, Bongiorno Pedrero Vasyliv and Lopez in his slip stream.
Godoy takes the KoM in front of Bongiorno and Pedrero
Brändle leads the pack on the climb. 73 riders at 6’15”
Tratnik has a puncture.
Over the top the pack was reduced to 48 riders, Preidler Carthy, Vysna, Novikov the most prominent to be dropped.
Bongiorno, Godoy and Lopez form the new leading group at Cat.3 Puerto de la Cruz de Usaño
Lopez struggle and fall back to a group with Hacecky and Mai, 27” further back
Godoy takes another KoM sprint in front of Bongiorno and Mai.
Godoy moves up to 7th in KoM 10 points behind the leaders.
Group Mai passing the climb
Brändle again leading the pack on the climb. 47 riders at 7’03”
A group was formed on the downhill, Brenes, Hacecky, Iturria, Lopez, Mai, Pedrero, Vasyliv, Warchol, they are about a minute behind the leading duo passing the short uncategorized hill about 7 km before the final climb starts, Lemus Davila and van der Hugenhaben about 36” back.
Godoy and Bongiorno can’t keep the gap and was caught by the 2nd group with 3.3 km to the mountain.
The pace has been extremely high, in the process first Iturria then Lopez and finally Mai have all lost contact with the group over the last 2.5 flat km.
Brenes attacks still with 3.3 km to the start of Alto de los Machucos
The pack is at 8’52 behind so it is clearly reasonable to expect one of the climbers from the breakaway to take the stage today, Brenes must be the favorite now, starting the final climb with 19” down to Godoy and Bongiorno, another 13” to Hacecky and Pedrero and further 18” to Vasyliv and Warchol
The slopes we got here is unbelievable, basically no limit to how much time a rider can gain.
With 7.5 km to the finish (6.3 to the KoM), Brenes after about one km of climbing has 37” to Bongiorno.
At 53” Godoy
At 1’16” Hacecky, Pedrero, Vasyliv, Warchol and Mai
At 2’10” Lopez, Iturria
At 2’46” van der Hugenhaben
At 3’41” Lemus Davila, Kruijswijk, Poljanski
At 5’35” Latour
At 6’22 Carpenter
Everyone else reeled in.
The pack is at 8’40”, seemingly accepting the fact that the stage win is over and has grown back to 68 riders led by Gilanipoor
In the pack we see Quintana make some smaller accelerations, clearly intending to split the large group.
We get the split and we now got a favorite group of 23, sitting like this: Quintana, Lunke, Denifl, Galta, Tvetcov, Kritskiy, Taaramäe, Pluchkin, Brambilla, Kudus, Foliforov (great), Cattaneo, Tenorio, Pruus (brilliant), Keizer, Barguil, Kolesnikov, Velits, Mamykin (great), Haig, Keinath, Olivier and Kirsch
They have about 6km to the mountain top 7.1 to the finish line.
Up front Brenes has gained a lead around 1’10 and that haven’t changed for the last approx. 4 km
So right now the action is in the favorite group, where Quintana attacked with 4.7 km to the top
Tenorio close the gap, and counter attack.
Kolesnikov, Mamykin and Pruus was dropped.
At the rear end of the favorite group Keizer and Keinath also struggling but hangs in for now. Tenorio did not get away.
With 2.8 km to the top for the favorites another acceleration, this time Kritskiy in front of Pluchkin and Denifl.
Tvetcov dropped, Galta dropped and finally a 4 rider group, Olivier, Velits, Brambilla and Lunke dropped by the many accelerations.
The fireworks far from over yet, with a little more than 2 km to the top for the favorites, Denifl opens a 30” gap and catch Lopez
Brenes takes the Hors catégorie climb moving to fourth in the competition in front of Bongiorno now 3rd and Godoy now 2nd in KoM, but it is Warchol passing the top as 4th, who will be the new KoM leader.
With 500 meters to the top Denifl has now 1’16 to the race leader group, at the same time we get another acceleration Barguil and Kudus, although it may not seem like that at the TV screens we are still at 9.7% slopes.
Brenes takes a very prominent stage win at “Alto de los Machucos” know as ‘rampas inhumanas’ in Spain.
Bongiorno 2nd at 1'03”
Godoy 3rd at 1'23”
Warchol 4th at 2'30”
Denifl 5th at 2’42”
Barguil 6th, Pedrero 7th, Kudus 8th, Vasyliv 9th and Mai round of top 10, all at 3’15”
Also Taaramäe, Kritskiy, Tenorio, Pluchkin, Haig, Keizer, Brambilla, Cattaneo and Hacecky at the same time.
At 4'28” Lopez, Keinath, Olivier, Quintana and Velits
Rein Taaramäe keep the race lead in front of Timofey Kritskiy and Aleksandr Pluchkin
Rein Taaramäe keeps the points lead, 38 points ahead of Timofey Kritskiy
Bartosz Warchol new KoM leader, 2 points ahead of Caio Godoy.
Merhawi Kudus leads the U23, with 8’56 down to Miguel Angel Lopez
Aegon – Lavazza took back the team lead with 56” to Aker - MOT
Peter Varga did not make it within the time limit.
Vuelta a Espana 
