Today's
stage: Short, climby medium mountain stage with no big climb to
force a separation as the end. In other words, breakaway territory.
Who
won today's stage? Lars
Bak (Lotto-Belisol) got his stage win he was searching for in his
home country of Denmark by successfully attacking his breakaway
companions with 1.5 km to go in the race.
What
matters in the GC race? A couple of the breakaway guys were
actually in range of the overall lead and remade the GC standings.
Sandy Casar (FDJ) finished second on the stage and is now 3rd
overall and Ivan Santaromita (BMC) was also in the break and is now
5th. None of the true contenders lost or gained any time
today.
What
matters in the other competitions?
Red
Jersey (Points) – No changes here as none of the breakaway
riders that absorbed all the points are even in the top 10 in this
category. Mark Cavendish (Team Sky) still leads Matt Goss (GreenEdge)
with overall leader Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) and Dominico
Pozzovivo (Colnago) not too far behind.
Blue
Jersey (King of the Mountains) – As expected, someone in the
breakaway went looking for King of the Mountain points and Michal
Golas (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) got enough of them to take the lead in
this category from Miguel Rubiano (Androni-Giacatolli).
White
Jersey (Best Young Rider) – No changes here. Damiano Caruso
(Liquigas) still leads followed by Team Sky's Colombian pairing of
Rigoberto Uran and Sergio Henao
Team
Classification – Nevermind what I said yesterday about this not
heating up until the high mountains. With the way this breakaway
formed and the teams in it, this was remade today with Movistar
leading followed by Liquigas and then BMC. Also of note is how far
down Orica GreenEdge is. The Australian team is over 2 hours down is
over 40 minutes down on the next weakest team. That's mostly because
they brought a team of no climbers to a climbing based race.
Biggest
surprise: Casar and Santaromita's presence in the breakaway.
Considering how close they were to the lead, I'm surprised they got
the leash they did from the peloton and that leash almost cost
Rodriguez his pink jersey.
Biggest
disappointment: Why did Liquigas do the chasing? Shouldn't
Katusha, the team of the overall leader be the team chasing the break
to keep the leader's jersey. What was Liquigas thinking doing all the
work for Katusha? It makes no sense. Then again, Liquigas in this
race often makes no sense. They win in spite of their bad tactics on
occasion (see 2010 with weird chases and being complicit in allowing
the huge breakaway to ride away with the race).
Other
items of note: Over
at the Tour of California, Peter Sagan (Liquigas) took stage 4 in a
sprint, just like the first three stages. I would write a full post
about that race if something interesting happened. Alas, it's the
same every day: early climbing allows breakaway to go, followed by
peloton catching somewhere along the line, the race fully coming back
together and Sagan winning a bunch sprint over Heinrich Haussler
(Garmin). That said, Sagan won't be winning today. It's time trial
day in Californina... We lost three more Giro riders today. William
Bonnet (FDJ) finally abandoned. He had been struggling with injuries
since crashing in Denmark. Mads Christensen (Saxo Bank) also
abandoned and Tomasz Marczynski (Vacansoleil) finished outside the
time cut.
What
is coming tomorrow? 122
km sprint stage. Seriously. This would qualify as a sign that pain
and suffering is about to come the peloton in a very short period. A
stage like this in the Giro always means summit finish in the high
mountains the next day and possibly longer and that is exactly what
is coming. Short sprint day tomorrow followed by two days of high
mountain summit finishes.
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