Tour de Pologne will head into the decisive mountainous part on the coming stages. As a result, Tinkoff-Saxo used the flat stage 3 suited for the sprinters to recover from Monday’s big crash, where GC riders Robert Kiserlovski and Pawel Poljanski were affected.
While Matteo Pelucchi took the stage win in a bunch sprint finish on stage 3, Tinkoff-Saxo turned the attention towards the coming stages in the medium mountains. Sports director Bruno Cenghialta notes that all team riders affected by Monday’s massive crash has recovered well.
“We wanted to be safe and focus on tomorrow, where we think we have better chances at getting a better result. Fortunately, the three riders that crashed yesterday were in good form today and took advantage of this relatively uneventful stage to recover for the rest of the race”, says Cenghialta and adds:
“As we commented after the finish of yesterday's stage, today was again a day for sprinters. We let a five-strong breakaway form and they managed to build an advantage up to 3 minutes. IAM Cycling, Astana and Orica-GreenEdge took turns in pulling and controlling, finally reaching the breakaway. The stage came to a finish with a bunch sprint but we avoided taking unnecessary risks, given the huge pileup that took place in yesterday's final sprint”.
Stage 4, 5 and 6 offers plenty of altitude gain in order to create a selection among the riders fighting for a top spot on the overall leaderboard. Bruno Cenghialta acknowledges that the opposition will be fierce but adds that the team will play a more active role.
“Stages 5 and 6 are the most important in this year's Tour de Pologne, while stage 4 is the first one with undulating climbs. We will try to have a couple of riders in the breakaway tomorrow and make the stage a bit harder than what it could be. We will try to be more proactive and create situations in view of the two big stages ahead on Thursday and Friday”, finishes Bruno Cenghialta.
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