Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo) has underlined his status as the best climber in this year’s Tour de Pologne by taking a huge solo win in the final mountain stage of the race, adding to the victory he took in yesterday’s stage 5. The local hero attacked a select front group on the steepest section of the final climb and held off the Movistar duo of Benat Intxausti and Ion Izagirre by 10 seconds to take both the stage win and the overall lead on the eve of the decisive time trial.

 

One month ago Rafal Majka had not won a single professional race but since he opened his account in the Tour de France stage to Risoul, he has been unstoppable. After his win in yesterday’s first mountain stage of the Tour de Pologne, the Pole made it a clean sweep of the hilly stages in his home race by winning today’s traditional stage to Bukowina Tatrzanska.

 

All day, Majka showed his intentions by using his very strong Tinkoff-Saxo team to make the race as hard as possible and it was a huge turn by Pawel Poljanski on the third last climb that made the first big selection. Rory Sutherland and Oliver Zaugg did a fabulous work on the lowers slopes of the penultimate ascent, setting up their captain for his first attack.

 

Majka stroke on the steep 22% section near the top but failed to get clear of his rivals and at the top, an 8-rider group had formed. With several riders having teammates in the second group that included race leader Petr Vakoc (Omega Pharma-Quick Step), however, there was no great cohesion among the leaders.

 

At the bottom of the final climb, the two groups merged to form a 20-rider front group and an impressive Zaugg went straight back to work to set his captain up for one final attack that should serve the purpose of gaining time on the time triallists. Again he used the steepest section of the 4km climb to the finish to make his move and this time only Ion Izagirre could match him.

 

The Basque cracked after just a few seconds and fell back to his teammate Benat Intxausti who rode a perfect climb within his limits. Hitting the final two easier kilometres, the two Movistar riders started to trade pulls and gradually close the gap to the lone Pole.

 

From there, it was a fierce pursuit all the way to the line and inside the final kilometre, the Movistar pair seemed to be getting closer. However, Majka managed to keep them at bay and rode hard all the way to the line to maximize his time gains.

 

10 seconds later Intxausti led Izagirre across the line to make it an exact copy of yesterday’s podium. Another 10 seconds later Christophe Riblon (Ag2r) won the sprint from a 6-rider group that had been formed on the steepest section of the ascent.

 

Vakoc ended up losing around 45 seconds and so relinquished the overall lead to Majka who now has an 18-second advantage over Intxausti, with Izagirre being 4 seconds further adrift. However, both Movistar riders are better time triallists and so all is still to play for in tomorrow’s final stage which is the decisive, flat 25km time trial in Krakow.

 

The hardest stage

After yesterday’s first big mountain stage, the climbers got one final chance to make a difference in the penultimate stage which took place over 174km between Bukovina Terma Hotel Spa and Bukowina Tatrzanska. The stage was almost entirely made up of four laps of a tough circuit with three climbs and only had a small digression on the first lap. The finish line was located at the top of the final ascent.

 

As it was the case yesterday, the riders took the start under rainy conditions. Damiano Cunego (Lampre-Merida) who crashed in stage 1 and was riding with stitches in a wound on his knee, decided to leave the race and didn’t sign in.

 

History shows that this stage is very hard to control and so it was no surprise to see lots of attacks right from the beginning. Giant-Shimano, the Polish national team, Orica-GreenEDGE and Belkin were among the most active and two of those teams had riders in the first significant move when Jack Bobridge (Belkin) and Michael Matthews (Orica) attacked.

 

Many attacks

Salvatore Puccio (Sky), Andrey Zeits (Astana) and Pawel Bernas (Poland) tried to bridge the gap but only Bernas made the junction. However, Tinkoff-Saxo had taken control of the peloton and they brought the group back.

 

After Puccio had won the first special sprint and Brett Lancaster (Orica) had abandoned the race, the attacking continued. Giant-Shimano were again active but like before Matthews and Bobridge made it into the move when they joined forces with Pawel Cieslik (Poland).

 

The break takes off

Cieslik won the second special sprint while his teammate Konrad Dakowski abandoned the race. Moments later, however, the trio was brought back.

 

Damiano Caruso (Cannondale) and KOM leader Maciej Paterski (CCC) attacked just after the 30km mark and this would be the start of the day’s break. Christian Meier (Orica) was the first to join them and later Sergei Chernetskii (Katusha), Sergey Lagutin (Rusvelo) and Alexis Vuillermoz (Ag2r) also made the junction.

 

Paterski scores points

Johannes Fröhlinger (Giant) and Davide Malacarne (Europcar) were the final riders to bridge the gap and now the peloton finally slowed down. At the 40km mark, the gap was 2 minutes and 20 minutes later the escapees were 5 minutes ahead.

 

While Paterski beat Chernetskii, Meier, Vuillermoz and Caruso in the KOM sprint, the advantage started to come down as Tinkoff-Saxo, OPQS and Garmin-Sharp had now taken control. At the first passage of the line, the gap was 4.25 and at the top of the third categorized climb it was only 3.45. Here Paterski beat Meier, Fröhlinger, Malacarne and Chernetskii in the battle for the points.

 

Gavazzi takes off

Paterski beat Meier, Malacarne and Vuillermoz on the fourth climb too while the gap hovered around the 3.45 mark. At the end of the second lap, it was exactly 3.45 but the peloton then accelerated and brought it down to 2.30.

 

On the first climb of the circuit, Francesco Gavazzi (Astana) attacked and he quickly opened a 1-minute gap over the peloton which was still led by Tinkoff-Saxo, Garmin and OPQS. The three teams maintained a 2.45 gap while Paterski took maximum points on the first uncontested.

 

Tinkoff up the pace

Gavazzi constantly dangled around 1.15 off the lead while Tinkoff-Saxo decided to tighten the screws on the penultimate climb. The team put Bruno Pires and Nicki Sørensen on the front and the pair started to reduce their deficit.

 

Lagutin beat Paterski in the sprint at the top and at that point Gavazzi was only 50 seconds behind. The Tinkoff-Saxo pace, however, started to bring the peloton closer to the lone Italian.

 

Gavazzi is caught

With 40km to go, Gavazzi was brought back and the escapees started the final lap with just a 45-second advantage. On the finishing straight, Jerome Cousin (Europcar) launched an attack but as Pires and Sørensen maintained a fast pace, he was quickly brought back.

 

Meier won the only intermediate sprint at the bottom of the first climb while Evgeni Petrov and Thomas De Gendt had now joined Pires and Sørensen in the pace-setting. On the lower slopes of the climb, Meier rode hard on the front which caused several splits in the front group.

 

The break splits up

Fröhlinger and Malacarne were the first to get dropped and later Lagutin, Paterski, Caruso and Chernetskii also fell off the pace. Caruso managed to rejoin the front group while the three chasers were caught just before the top of the climb.

 

Poljanski was now riding on the front of the peloton and his fast pace caused the peloton to split to pieces. At the top, only around 30 riders were still in contention.

 

Poljanski splits the peloton

Meier took maximum points on the climb but was put into difficulty on the descent when Caruso attacked. However, he still had enough left to make a fruitless counterattack when the front trio came back together.

 

With 23km to go, the break was caught and now Poljanski was just riding hard all the way to the bottom of the penultimate climb. Sutherland took over as soon as the road ramped upwards before handing the baton to Zaugg.

 

Majka makes his first move

Davide Villella (Cannondale) launched the first attack but Zaugg easily brought him back. On the steepest section, Giampaolo Caruso (Katusha) made the next acceleration and opened a small gap over the peloton that was splintering to pieces, with Vakoc being one of the riders to lose contact.

 

Now Majka launched his first attack and bridged the gap to Caruso. Izagirre and Barguil joined the pair but Majka made several further accelerations.

 

A front octet is formed

The front quartet remained intact and so Robert Gesink and Lars Petter Nordhaug (both Belkin) bridged the gap. Later Wout Poels (OPQS) also made the junction and finally Przemyslaw Niemiec (Lampre) made it an 8-rider front group.

 

Majka made one final attack over the top that only Barguil could match but things came back together on the descent. Nordhaug and Barguil made a few attacks but failed to get clear.

 

The second group rejoins the leaders

Barguil rode very hard on the descent and got a small advantage. When he reached the bottom, however, he decided to wait for his chasers.

 

The second group with Vakoc rejoined the front octet and Zaugg went straight to the front to set up Majka for another attack.  His fast pace made the group split on the final climb, with Vakoc being one of the first to lose contact.

 

The decisive attack

With a little less than 3km to go, Majka launched his attack and after Izagirre had briefly followed him, he finally got clear alone. Izagirre drifted back to Intxausti while a small group led by Caruso formed a bit further back.

 

From there, Majka time trialled his way all the way to the line to make it two in a row. Intxausti led his teammate across the line 10 seconds later to make it the same podium as in stage 5.