Today's Stage: A stage 3
Mountaintop finish. And it ended up being great racing, better than
anything involving the GC men at the Tour de France.
Who won today's stage? Alejandro
Valverde (Movistar) beat Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha) in a photo
finish after Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff) attacked six times
climbing up the mountain. There were only four riders at the end but
a false flat near the end allowed a group of 10 riders to bridge back
to only a six second gap.
What matters in the GC race?
Valverde also took the red leader's jersey with his stage win as he
was on the winning team in the opening TTT and also got a 12 second
time bonus for the stage win. Valverde teammate Benat Intxausti is
second as he finished with the second group. The other three lead
group riders, Rodriguez, Contador and Tour de France runner up Chris
Froome (Team Sky) are 3rd-5th. Most of the
other contenders for top positions are still in good position as they
finished in the second group. That included the Rabobank pair of
Robert Gesnik and Bauke Mollema, Igor Anton (Euskatel) and key
domestiques Daniel Moreno (Katusha) and Rigoberto Uran (Team Sky). Of
note among those losing time were John Gadret (Ag2r La Mondiale),
Damiano Cunego (Lampre), Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Lotto-Belisol) and
Thomas de Gendt (Vacansoleil)
What matters in the other
competitions? This section will be hiatus until after the summit
finish on stage four.
Biggest surprise: The sheer
amount of aggression. There was more aggression amongst the GC men on
this final climb than there was the entire Tour de France (minus
Nibali). While most of that was Contador, Valverde also put in a
couple of digs as did Rodriguez. Even Anton, despite finishing in the
second group upped the pace at the front at one point.
Biggest disappointment:
Defending champion Juan Jose Cobo (Movistar) hasn't been in good
form. We know that. Still, he was out of the front group before
Contador started his digs. Given his teammates Valverde and Intxausti
are 1-2 overall, Cobo should be ready to be fetching water bottles
and pacing his teammates up the climbs for the rest of the rest of
the race.
Other items of note: Many of the
top riders in the world are at the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. That is
starting today with an interesting stage that will likely end in a
select sprint amongst GC men. Part of that is the climbing on the
stage (there is a lot) and part of that is the altitude as the
sprinters who can climb normally could make it on this type of
stage... Tactically, this stage was very interesting. The job of
chasing the breakaway was left to Movistar who had the race
leadership. Once it was evident the break would be caught, Team Sky
came to the front to try their train thing that worked so well at the
Tour de France. It didn't work. Contador, Valverde and Rodriguez are
just the type of riders who will uncaringly attack the train in high
risk moves. With more than one of them (only Nibali fit that bill in
the Tour), the train is much more likely to crack and while Froome
was never isolated (Uran was in the second group), he certainly won't
be getting to the final climb of each stage with five domestiques at
his disposal like his teammate Bradley Wiggins did at the Tour.
What is coming tomorrow? More
mountains. Tomorrow is summit finish number two. It is not terribly
difficult, but it is longer than today's finish was. Expect more
aggression especially as it is a true summit finish as opposed to
toady when the summit was 2 km from the finish.
Tomorrow's Prediction: Alberto
Contador, Joaquin Rodriguez, Robert Gesink (Rabobank)
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