Rosas took the stage win and yellow jersey home yesterday, and it could very well be his teammate Kalaba who overtakes that jersey today. Today's favourite seems to be Gaviria, but Kump’s puncheur skills could also come in handy in this finale, where he could already gain some extra time on other GC riders with a good sprint.
A lot of riders trying to join the break of the day, and the first KoM of the day only a couple of km in the race. Quaade is the first to attack but can’t hold on for long, as Roux takes the maximum of the points ahead of Townsend and Per.
Now this is what I call surprising! Kalaba doesn’t chase the 10+ riders ahead for his leader, but seems to be trying to join them! Lierse doesn’t seem very keen on letting that happen.
The group Kalaba gets caught, but there are still twelve riders ahead of the peloton: Townsend, Roux, Dumoulin, Yamamoto, Dekker, Gallego Martin, Sotberg, Per, Bridges, Paprstka, Quaade and Di Maggio are 50” ahead of the peloton with 109 km to go.
Xero, Lierse and Adastra work together to make sure that group is caught before it becomes to dangerous. Bridges manages to stay away and crosses the first intermediate sprint of the day ahead of Gaviria and Kristoff.
On the Zijpenberg, second KoM of the day, nobody attacks. The KoM-points go to domestiques Schreurs, Nych and Beullens, while except for Insausti who is 3’ behind, everyone is in the peloton. 80 km to the finish line!
Andorra not thinking about doing any domestique work for Summerhill, as now Wallays attacks! He brings teammate Tizza and Bridges with him. They lead by 2’ over the peloton with 60 km to go.
Bridges beats the two Andorra riders In the second intermediate sprint of the day, which shouldn’t mean anything unless they win the stage. 43 km left, peloton at 1’30”.
The leaders reach the top of the Oude Holleweg for the first time. Wallays attacks and wins the KoM-sprint of second category, taking the KoM-lead. Bridges is second, Tizza falls back drastically which sees Okamoto taking the last points in the peloton. 20 km to go, time difference of one minute!
The last intermediate sprint of the day is exactly where the finish line will be in 14.5 km. Bridges takes the points ahead of Wallays, while Kalaba takes the last two points and second in the peloton, meaning he is now virtually wearing the yellow jersey!
11.5 km to go and the escapees have been caught, also thanks to the work of Kalaba, who is definitely doing some strange things today! Fourteen rider have a small gap to make up for, including Summerhill, Stauff and Canelon!
Fedeli leads the peloton inside the last 10 km! We still have the Oude Holleweg to go, will we see an attack there?
7.5 km to go as Peak leads the peloton at the foot of the Oude Holleweg, 1.1 km at an average of 8%! The peloton is split in two though, with yellow jersey Rosas amongst those left behind!
The sprinter teams manage to control the peloton. Peak still leads on top, which means he’ll have the lead in the KoM-classification. Other points go to Gamper and Smukulis. The sprinters that are positioned best at the moment are Kristoff, Kalaba, Boev, Houle, Van Asbroeck, Gaviria and Kump.
That group of sprinters contains 22 riders and has a small gap over the rest of the peloton! Juul-Jensen was riding attentive and is also in this group! Will this group actually win time today?!
Gaviria’s lead-out has already been reduced to only Sajnok, and there are still 3 km to go! Claeys brings another group back, but there are still several gaps, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens, but now, onto the sprint for the stage win!
The pace is not extremely high with 2 km to the finish line, as Sajnok doesn’t want to bring his leader in the sprint too soon. Who will take the bait?!
Brockhoff now attacking with 1.5 km to go! while Sajnok tries to hold his wheel while leader Gaviria cheekily slides behind Kristoff, who also has Kump right behind him. The Slovenian can still take a stage win, but probably won’t be gaining any time over another GC favourite, as both Benoot and Debesay are also in the leading group now! The gaps over other groups are relatively small, so maybe we won’t see any time differences at all!
Brockhoff actually has a nice gap under the flamme rouge! Can he hold on?! Sajnok seems to be out of energy!
600 meters to go for the German, but it won’t be easy! His teammate Van Asbroeck is leading the sprint behind him, with Gaviria the first rider on his wheel!
Gaviria now ahead of Van Asbroeck, but Brockhoff still with a nice gap in the final 300 meters! Kump trying to overtake the Lierse rider, he seems on his way to scoring some juicy bonification seconds!
Brockhoff cheering already, but still 100 meters to go! He still has a nice gap, but this isn’t over yet!
Okay, now it is! A late smart move by Brockhoff couldn’t be answered by an exchausted Sajnok, giving his team Polar a great stage win!
Gaviria (2nd) and Kump (3rd) take a hold of the other podium places, while the rest of the top-10 is completed by Van Asbroeck (4th), Houle (5th), Kristoff (6th), Kalaba (7th), Debesay (8th), Boev (9th) and Juul-Jensen (10th).
In the GC, we see barely any changes. Kalaba switches places with teammate Rosas to take the lead and Dumoulin loses some minutes, but that seems to be it concerning the classification and favourites. See you tomorrow!
