World Champ comes good in Poland

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World Champion Alessandro Ballan claimed his first victory in the rainbow banded jersey in a torrential downpour in the Tour of Poland's fifth stage. The Lampre rider broke free from a reduced peloton on the day's last climb, taking with him five riders who helped the group to gain 15 seconds on the chasing peloton, and then handily out-sprinted them to claim victory.

"I knew my form was good after the Tour de France and I said my aim was to win in Poland," said Ballan. "I did it, thanks to my teammates. Tomorrow we'll try to control the race in order to maintain the leadership."

"The victory is the result of a perfect job by the whole team," said sport director Fabrizio Bontempi. "Ballan could wait for the proper moment to attack and then he was superb in the sprint: I told him to control Reda because he didn't expend energy in the breakaway since his teammate Davis was in the bunch, but today Alessandro was too strong."

The 163km journey from Strzyżów to Krynica-Zdrój featured eight classified climbs, but contrary to the classifications of category 1 and 2, the hills were relatively short and did not favour the pure climbers enough to truly break up the peloton.

After the first intermediate sprint, which was won by Quick Step's Allan Davis, the day's breakaway went clear. Six men made up the move: Matthew Goss (Team Saxo Bank), Andrey Zeits (Astana), Pavel Brutt (Team Katusha), Christopher Sutton (Garmin - Slipstream), Sébastien Turgot (BBox Bouygues Telecom), Ian Stannard (ISD).

Brutt became virtual leader of the mountains classification after taking the first two climbs, but the effort cost the breakaway.  Goss, Sutton and Zeits came unhitched and the break soon lost steam and wa caught. 

The peloton, reduced by the hilly closing circuit, was further reduced by the efforts of the Lampre and Liquigas teams, but it was the World Champion himself who put the stick to the bunch as the race headed up the final climb.

Ballan, who will leave Lampre at the end of the season and has yet to secure another contract, was clearly a man on a mission. He powered up and over the steep, 13.6% grade matched only by five other riders: Daniel Moreno (Caisse d'Epargne), Pieter Weening (Rabobank), Francesco Reda (Quick Step), Marek Rutkiewicz (Team Poland Bank BGZ) and Sylvester Szmyd (Liquigas).

The six men opened up a sizeable gap as the heavens opened up and rain pounded down as the group came into the final kilometre. Rutkiewicz was the first to go on the attack, but was chased down by his compatriot Szmyd. Weening opened up the sprint as the finish line drew near, but Ballan dug deep to pull out his championship form and won the stage convincingly.

Moreno slipped past Weening to claim second place, while Reda hung on for fourth. 

With the gap and the time bonus for the stage win, Ballan moved into the overall race lead by four seconds over his breakaway companion Moreno and six seconds over Weening. The remaining three riders occupy the next spots on GC at ten seconds, while previous leader Jurgen Roelandts is just one more second behind Ballan in seventh.