Well then, let’s finish this! Two battles are going on today and they might well overlap: one for the stage win, one for the GC. Durbridge among the pure time trialists and Cattaneo among the GC contenders are the favorites for the day, while Oomen has 52 and 55 seconds over Shikai and Taaramäe for the overall win, who are both superior time trialists but not by much.
Non-GC stage contenders
Kittel is the first big name time trialist on the road. But it quickly becomes apparent that he has left a lot of energy on the previous stages. He’s tied on time with Young and Ocampo at the intermediate time check and it’s actually the Xero rider who takes the lead at the finish line, one second ahead of the other two.
Wolf then takes the lead by 14 seconds and keeps it for quite a while until he is bested by Dumoulin. The Dutch is 11 seconds faster. Kiflay follows shortly after and takes second place, two seconds faster than Wolf.
Sajnok with a bit of a disappointing ride, he’s fourth for the moment at + 24. But Lierse’s attention is all on Oomen today, of course.
Arvidsson and Coppel both enter the provisional Top 10, then comes Durbridge. He bests Dumoulin by 10 seconds at the intermediate sprint and 18 at the finish line for a time of 29’25. That’ll be the time to beat for a while.
Yesterday’s stage winner Wohler comes closest of the next few dozen riders. He’s 5th at the line behind Kiflay and Wolf, four seconds ahead of Bjerg who also did a good job. If he ends up around the Top 10 here today, Wohler has a decent chance to move up to second in the points classification.
Janse van Rensburg in contrast is a disappointment, finishing outside of the Top 25 even at the point.
Two Red Bull Zalgiris riders with very different outcomes: First, Affonso does surprisingly well and finishes 6th for the moment. Then Fernandes, who was expected to do well given his good climbing and recovery, ends up only 18th. His race overall was surely one to forget.
Neither Canty nor Herrada, both with somewhat similar though slightly weaker skillsets than Fernandes, can’t make any impact either, as we’re getting closer to the Top 25 in the GC.
Conci is the first rider in a long time who sets a competitive time. But Durbridge doesn’t have to break a sweat. 16 seconds slower than the Australian is still good enough for provisional second place. Shortly afterwards, Kritskiy, who was judged a Top 5-ish contender pre-race, finishes 8th. A fitting end to an overall desastrous race, which he leaves with a 26th overall place.
Lunke remains one place ahead in 25th, he has a significant gap to Borisavljevic. But that’s where things get interesting.
Race for the Top 20
TT
24
Milos Borisavljevic
Cedevita
+ 5'07
74
23
Geoffrey Bouchard
Cedevita
+ 4'39
67
22
Robert Gesink
Indosat Ooredoo
+ 4'33
73
21
Daniel Habtemichael
Xero Racing
+ 4'31
74
20
Richard Antonio Carapaz
Crabbe-CC Chevigny
+ 4'18
72
19
Romain Sicard
Strava
s.t.
74
18
Tadej Pogacar
Cedevita
+ 3'57
74
17
Piter Campero
Sauber Petronas Racing
+ 3'56
69
15
Orluis Aular
Binance
+ 3'52
70
12
Jaime Roson
Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team
+ 3'25
61
11
Andrea Manfredi
Crabbe-CC Chevigny
+ 3'02
65
Serbian TT champ Borisavljevic does not seem to have a very good day. He clocks in at + 1’07 behind Durbridge, which likely won’t even be Top 50 on the day. It’s still enough to move past Bouchard, but he doesn’t come close to challenging the guys ahead.
Within this group, there’s the secondary fight for the white jersey. Habtemichael trails Pogacar by 34 seconds and he sets a high bar. 4th place at the finish line, trailing the lead by 29 seconds.
None of Gesink (+ 1’14), Carapaz (+ 51) or Sicard (+ 52) come close to that, they all remain behind or get overtaken by the Eritrean.
Pogacar however proves up to the challenge. He’s 11 seconds slower than Habtemichael, which translates to 13th at the line for the moment, but proves enough to remain in white. He also easily overtakes Campero (+ 1’22) and Aular (+ 1’14). The former also falls behind Carapaz and Sicard.
All of Reis, Daniel and Pluchkin would reach the finish before Roson and Manfredi, but those are not the riders the two breakaway heroes are riding against.
They aim to stay in the Top 20, for which Campero is currently the measuring stick. Roson falls resoundingly short, finishing more than 3 minutes behind the best time and dropping all the way to behind even Borisavljevic. With a bit more buffer and over a minute faster than the Spaniard, Manfredi cuts his losses, stays ahead of Campero and even Sicard and Carapaz. In addition to the green and polkadots jerseys, he takes home a 16th place in the GC, behind Pogacar and Habtemichael.
Race for the Top 10
TT
16
Rafael Reis
Red Bull Zalgiris
+ 3'52
76
14
Gregory Daniel
Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team
s.t.
77
13
Aleksandr Pluchkin
Team Popo4Ever
+ 3'36
75
10
Pierre Paolo Penasa
Philips - Force India
+ 2'59
70
9
Yonathan Monsalve
Assa Abloy
+ 2'53
71
Two mediocre time trialists currently hold the final two Top 10 spots, three better ones want in. Reis is the first, he finishes in provisional 11th place for the stage at + 38, keeping Pogacar behind him as the first order of business, but then also overtaking Daniel, who’s just three seconds slower but that’s enough. Still, he’ll be handily rewarded for his breakaway efforts.
Then comes Pluchkin. He is another 6 seconds slower than Daniel, but has enough leeway to keep both behind him. The bigger question is, can he make up enough on the two ahead of him? He needs around 40 seconds.
But he doesn’t get it. Penasa saves exactly 4 of the 37 seconds he had over the Moldovan, while Monsalve loses as little as 18 seconds.
Race for the Top 5
TT
8
Mattia Cattaneo
Minions - Subwoolfer
+ 2'27
79
7
Jack Haig
Amaysim Cervelo
+ 2'26
77
6
Nairo Quintana
Volcanica - Fox
+ 1'52
71
5
Natnael Berhane
Project: Africa
+ 1'33
66
4
Joao Rodrigues
Binance
+ 1'21
74
Cattaneo and Haig were the big favorites before the race, but one bad day each saw them lose all hope to reach even the podium. Now, they’re fighting to get perhaps at least into the Top 5, and are also the only ones who can reasonably be expected to still best Durbridge.
And indeed, at the time check, they’re close: Cattaneo is 8 seconds behind the lead, Haig just 7. They’ve also cut their deficits to Quintana by around 20 seconds and to Berhane by around 30, but they need to keep that pace up.
Cattaneo struggles a bit over the second half, he finishes 4th for now at + 26, the same time as Habtemichael, which drives home the latter’s incredible performance.
Haig does slightly better, though only by 6 seconds. This means that a) we can congratulate Durbridge on the stage win, while Conci and Dumoulin can continue to hope for a podium finish. And b) we know the times needed for Quintana - 30’18, or + 53 - and Berhane - 30’37, or + 1’12.
Quintana is the first at the line. And it quickly becomes clear that he can’t keep either Haig or Cattaneo behind him. His time is 30’42.
Then it’s Berhane, who also falls behind the two top favorites. Now, it’s a fight for 7th between him and Quintana, with the better end for the Columbian. Project: Africa’s leader drops to 8th.
Rodrigues did not play a big role today, simply because he was secure in 4th but also far away from 3rd to not be able to attack that. He rides an overall really solid race and does so today, too. Provisional 13th at + 36.
Race for the GC Win
TT
3
Rein Taaramäe
Zara - Irizar
+ 55
77
2
Chen Shikai
Voyagin - Bird
+ 52
76
1
Sam Oomen
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
25h32'07
74
Oomen had two absolutely terrific days in the mountains, which gave him a pretty significant advantage going into the time trial. That was necessary: He’s 8 seconds behind Shikai and 9 behind Taaramäe at the checkpoint. So, not another overwhelming performance, but good enough to not worry, one would think. In the fight for second, meanwhile, Taaramäe has made up one of the three seconds that seperated the two of them. But neither is particularly close to the stage win or even the podium.
Taaramäe trails off a bit towards the end and in a vacuum, 32nd at + 48 is actually a pretty big disappointment. But what counts is how Shikai does next.
And there he comes. Giving it everything he’s got, Shikai finishes … 34th at + 49! One second, just like at the checkpoint. Second place in the GC goes to Voyagin!
Which leaves only one rider on the road. Oomen, too, actually performs rather poorly, losing 1’10 to Durbridge, and given that’s 50 to Haig, a really strong day by one of his two main rivals could have actually put his position in danger. But not like this, and after his great performance on the first two days of the race, it’s really hard to argue that Sam Oomen is not a very worthy winner of this Internationale Österreich Rundfahrt.
Int. Österreich Rundfahrt 
