Finally, the Queen stage has arrived! With 127km it’s short, but is still has 4 categorized climbs, plus an uphill finish, so that should surely compensate for the lack of length!
Question will be if Rogers can hand on to the climbers, and who of those will take the stages. Dekker, Arroyo and Kashechkin seem to be the best climbers around. Surely they’ll be attacking the jellow jersey, and don’t forget that Pluchkin is very close to jellow already.
After loads of attacks, all controlled by La Gazzetta dello Sport, a groupe of four men finally got away. And not just four random rider, they are some good climbers! Solis, Taberlay, Rodgriguez and Sprick.
In the pack, the other teams leave all chasing to Gazzetta; they set all 7 men up front for Rogers. Reaching the foot of the second climb(8.7km at 9.5%!), the break has 2’20 to the 910 men remaining in the pack.
As Solis takes the KOM points, they have increased their lead to 5’30.
In the pack, not much happend on this climb, except that Kashechkin went to take the remaining KOM points. (Only Panayotov went of after taking some points)
Looking a little further back though, something did happen: Coppel got dropped. He’s Lucky though, since Brandt just had a puncture and two Unicef helpers and two Wikipedia helpers bring both ‘team leaders’ back to the back.
But then, on the next climb, with 38km and 9’00(!) to the break left, Iglinski goes! Abal and Trofimov are the first to follow. This results in other teams taking over the chasing from la Gazzetta, with much stronger riders. The three attackers quickly gain a minute though.
Up front, Tablerlay is dropped as Sprick takes some KOM points.
Behind them, the pack is still on the climb chasing the counter attackers. This isn’t going fast enough though, so Dekker starts off another bunch of attacks. Fothen, Pluchkin, Gesink, Sastre and Phinney are the ones to counter.
Over the top, Panayotov is still in front of the attackers after riding away from the pack after the second KOM sprint. He is 6’40 behind the leaders.
’40 later come Abal, Iglinski and Trofimov.
Another 55 second later, Dekker leads the attackers, but their gap is very small. 28km left.
Over the top though, only Dekker remains with a gap.
Since there’s a plateau rathert hen a decent right away, new attacks come over the top, trying to reach Dekker; Sanchez, di Gregorio, Suaza and Kloden are off.
Up front again, the riders reached the final categorized climb, and Solis decides to attack right away. None of the other two respond.
Behind them, all attackers from the pack join up at the foot of the climb. They’re 1’30 ahead of the pack.
In the pack, there’s still a few riders who’d rather be up front; so new attacks follow: Serpa leads them.
And he’s followed by pretty much every rider you’d expect to attack, including the jellow jersey holder Rogers. You can see all have very small gaps. Only the first rider – Iglinski – has a mentionable gap to the others.
This isn’t Rogers’ terrain though, and it seems like everybody is passing him. He’ll probably lose his jersey today.
Dekker has now caugth up with Iglinski as they ride away from the favourites groupe.
The current GC #2 Pluchkin is looking to join up with Abal, Serpa, Kashechkin and Panayotov in Chase behind Dekker and Iglinski.
But let’s not forget that, besides the GC battle, Solis is still up front. Behind him, Sprick has left Rodriguez trying to close in on Solis. The finish line is very close though.
As Dekker and Iglinski are looking better and better, the rest seem to settle in a few Chase groupes. Biggest name to have missed out: Arroyo, altough his chances for the GC where virtually zero anyway after the time trials.
To complete the groupes in the attack, you can add these names to the E9 groupe: Chacon, di Gregorio, Kvasina, van Huffel and Nibali
Solis dopesnt care what happends behind him though; he’s won the Queen stage of this years Tour de Romandie!
Sprick takes second in front of Rodriguez.
The GC riders havent reached the finish yet though, as Dekker is dropping Iglinski on the finil gradients to the finish. The first chasers seem to be closing in. Jellow jersey, Rogers, is in the last groupe seen on this picture; he’ll lose his jersey today.
And at the finish, over 5 minutes after Solis came in, there isnt much left of Dekker’s gap.
About a minute later comes in a groupe with Castano, Panayotov, Gesink, Serpa, Spilak and Fothen.
And we have to wait another minute for the jellow jersey groupe to come in, with Sanchez just ahead of them. This mean what number two in the GC, Pluchkin, has now taken over the lead!
