Today's stage: 196.8 km stage expected to end in a select sprint because of a late category 2 climb.
Who won today's stage? Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) riding his first Grand Tour got his first GT stage win beating stage 3 winner Pablo Lastras (Movistar) to the line out of a five man breakaway.
What matters in the GC race? Liquigas leader and race favorite Vincenzo Nibali was also in the breakaway along with two more teammates in addition to Sagan. This breakaway allowed Nibali to close to within 16 seconds of race leader Sylvain Chavanel (QuickStep) and take the lead amongst the GC favorites.
What matters in the other competitions?
Green Jersey (Points, Sprinter Competition) – Stage 5 winner Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) and Lastras are tied at the top of the standings. Rodriguez will wear the jersey tomorrow as the tiebreaker is the GC, where Rodriguez is 3rd and Lastras is nowhere to be found after giving up tons of time on the Sierra Nevada stage.
Polka Dot Jersey (King of the Mountains) – No major changes from yesterday. Daniel Moreno (Katusha) is still the leader followed by Chris Anker Sorenson (Saxo Bank-Sungard). Three-time defending KoM winner David Moncoutie (Cofidis) took the points on the late climb to cut his deficit down.
White Jersey (Allround) – Moreno, Rodriguez and Chavanel are the top three here. Since they are all wearing other jerseys, Sorenson in 4th place will be the wearer of the white jersey tomorrow.
Biggest surprise: The Liquigas train. Forming that kind of breakaway late in a stage is nearly unheard of. It was most certainly crosswind aided, but impressive ride and a huge shock considering quite a few of the bunch sprinters got over the climb. Liquigas was actually riding for Sagan to win a sprint and ended up with the gap because of Nibali's super descending skills. The only time I can remember anything like this occuring was Stage 3 in the 2009 Tour de France when Columbia-HTC (now HTC-High Road) got all nine men in a crosswind aided 28 man breakaway from the rest of the field to set Mark Cavendish up for an easy win.
Biggest disappointment: The Liquigas train. How did everyone else let this thing get away with Nibali in it? That is just a terrible tactical error by the other GC teams who were seemingly taking the day off from hard work and paid for it in the form of seconds. The only team I absolve from this is QuickStep who had a legitimate threat (Kevin Seeldrayers) in the breakaway and got Chavanel into the next group to protect his lead once Liquigas absorbed and then dropped the break. As for the rest, Katusha got caught sleeping and Leopard-Trek, working on GC for Jakob Fuglsang, burned a lot of energy on behalf of sprinter Daniele Bennati only to watch Nibali take time.
Other items of note: Kurt Asle Arvesen (Team Sky) abandoned after his awful crash yesterday... Matti Breschel (Rabobank) continued his team's run of Grand Tour bad luck, crashing out in the neutral zone before the race even started. It was made worse by the fact that the crash was into his teammate, Luis Leon Sanchez. Luckily for Rabobank, Sanchez is fine despite losing Breschel.
What is coming tomorrow? A real sprint stage. I know I have said that before but it really truly is. There isn't even a categorized climb on the route nor is there some sort of bizarre gradient in the final kilometer (that comes Saturday in stage 8).
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