Euskaltel's appointed sprinter Koldo Fernández De Larrea made local fans in the Basque Country of Spain happy as he sprinted to victory in Saturday's second and "halfway" stage of the three-day event, which started at Agurain and finished in the same town after 162.7 kilometres.
The stage, featuring an easy parcours, came down to a field sprint after all breakaway attempts were brought back. The final rush to the line was tight enough, but the Spaniard eventually triumphed over Australia's Baden Cooke (Barloworld) and Spain's José Joaquin Rojas (Caisse d'Epargne), with Antonio D'Aniello, Cristiano Fumagalli and Diego Milan in the other top six spots. Koldo notched up his third win so far this season.
Julian Sánchez Pimienta (Spa - Contentpolis-Murcia) assumed the overall leadership in the race - after stage one winner Daniel Moreno got a ten-second time penalty for hanging onto his team car - in front of compatriots Jaume Rovira (Extremadura-Grupo Gallardo) and Luis Pasamontes (Caisse d'Epargne), all of whom with the same GC time with just one stage to go.
The "breakaway of the day" came about two dozen kilometres into the stage, courtesy of four Spaniards and a Russian rider: Alexandr Arekeev (Acqua & Sapone-Caffè Mokambo), José Alberto Benítez (Saunier Duval-Scott), Francisco José Martínez Pérez (Andalucía-Cajasur), Ricardo Serrano (Tinkoff) and Oscar Pujol (Burgos Monumental) built up a maximum advantage of 05'47" by the km. 78 check. The front group was down to four men as Pujol lost contact after 103 kilometres, while chasing efforts from Koldo Fernandez's Euskaltel and Sánchez Pimienta's Contentpolis were cutting down the gap significantly.
Things went from bad to worse for the escapees as also J.J. Rojas' teammates joined the pursuit on the front of the pack. The gap was no more than 01'30" as the race came across the line for the first time. And with Caisse d'Epargne further picking up the pace as the going got vertical in the 25-km final circuit, the breakaway looked 100 percent doomed to failure. Arekeev, Benítez, Martínez and Serrano had to wave white flag about 15 km from the line.
The peloton split into two groups soon later, with the Caisse guys driving the first half and taking some 20 seconds out of the dropped ones, but the main bunch - with about 80 riders inside - regrouped again with 10 kilometres to go. Then Ceramiche Flaminia rushed to the front of the strung-out peloton and dictated the pace for some time, until the Russian Eduard Vorganov (Karpin Galicia) tried a surprise move with 4 km remaining; but he couldn't be a match to the flying peloton riding at 55 kph, no matter how good his legs were. Another Karpin Galicia athlete gave it a go again as soon as his team mate was reeled in, but he wasn't allow to make any gap either. This one was meant to be one for the sprinters, and in fact it ended up in a battle of fast wheels, whose outcome you already know.
www.dailypeloton.com / www.fundacioneuskadi.com
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