After yesterday’s gruelling mountain stage in the Vuelta a Espana, the field today faced the queen stage of the race over 225 kilometers counting four mountain tops from Andorra to Peyragudes where Team Saxo-Tinkoff launched a great attack.
A break including Saxo-Tinkoff’s Oliver Zaugg and Rafal Majka split up along the way while Team Saxo-Tinkoff tried maintaining a steady pace in the chase group lead by Chris Anker Sørensen.
However, Saxo-Tinkoff’s Nicolas Roche launched an attack with 30 kilometers to go and he established contact with his teammate, Zaugg and they now formed a Saxo-Tinkoff duo chasing the last man standing in front, Alexandre Geniez (FDJ) while trying to avoid the other favourites bridging the gap.
The many attacks from the favourites behind quickly took a great deal of the gap to Nicolas Roche who was now supported by Rafal Majka. They weren’t able to catch Geniez who took a beautiful stage win while the favourites had their own battle behind.
On the final 2 kilometers, Roche was alone trying to make it to the finish line and they weren’t able to sweep him up and finished the stage ahead of his rivals gaining seconds in the GC:
“The plan was to have a lot of options during the stage and everything worked out as planned. First Chris Anker Sørensen did a tremendous piece of work and after my escape, I bridged to Oliver (Zaugg) who lead me to Majka and did a good job taking me to the final bit where I really dug deep to keep the other guys behind but we succeeded and it was a great team performance,” said Saxo-Tinkoff’s Nicolas Roche after the stage.
Saxo-Tinkoff’s DS, Tristan Hoffmann was pleased with the team effort:
“Our strategy was to be prepared for as many different scenarios as possible so we would have a chance to go for the stage and to gain time for Nico. Both Oliver and Rafal fulfilled our expectations. Sadly, the favorites started testing each other pretty early and that took a great part of the gap but no matter the time gap, it was an excellent team performance and Nico was really fast on the final climb,” said the Dutch DS.
Roche is still 6th overall is now only a few seconds away from 5th.
Ron Callahan is the chief cook and bottlewasher at Bike World News, doing everything from website design to bike reviews.