With lots of climbers on their roster, Colombia had hoped to play a major role in yesterday's queen stages of the Tour de Slovenie and Route du Sud. After performing very poorly, the team tried to bounce back in less familiar terrain in today's final sprint stages.

Colombian veteran Leonardo Duque gave Team Colombia a top-10 placement in Route du Sud final stage, Saint-Gaudens – Castres of 179 km. Duque took 10th in the mass sprint of the peloton, who was beaten to the line by Adriano Malori (Movistar) by 5 seconds. Nicolas Roche (Tinkoff-Saxo) had no trouble in sealing the overall title after yesterday’s solo win, while Rodolfo Torres and Miguel Angel Rubiano were the best Team Colombia riders in the GC, 19th and 20th respectively.

Just like in yesterday’s 2nd stage, Carlos Julian Quintero managed to get into the day’s breakaway in France, working his way into a 8-man attempt started after 25 km. Tinkoff-Saxo held the reins of the bunch along with FDJ, the latter aiming to setup a sprint for Nacer Bouhanni, and the escapees were never allowed to get more than 4 minutes on the peloton.

After the final cat. 3 climb of the day, Europcar’s Yukiya Arashiro remained alone in the lead, and was joined with 17 km to go by two counter-attackers, Josh Edmonsson (Team Sky) and Adriano Malori. The peloton got in their wake, and was chasing at only 15 seconds with 3 km to go, but Malori tried a solo move and exploited his strong TT skills to deliver a win in style.

Team Colombia tried to sort something out of Tour de Slovenie final stage, Škofja Loka – Novo Mesto (153km), but the characteristics of the final circuit did not allow many options, after the team’s sprinter Edwin Avila did not take the start in stage 2. The sprint finish was won by Elia Viviani (Cannondale) ahead of Eduard Grosu (Vini Fantini) and Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEDGE). Tiago Machado (NetApp) took the overall win.

“We would have liked to try something in the finale with Valencia, but the final circuit was extremely fast, differently from last year, and there was not much that could be done to avoid a sprint,” Sports Director Oscar Pellicioli said.

Next on schedule for Team Colombia will be the Giro dell’Appennino on Tuesday June 24th, and then the riders will travel to Colombia, where they will spend some weeks with their families and training in altitude before returning to Italy in the second half of July.