Louis Barré made Visma-Lease a Bike’s week more of a success by winning stage 6 of the Tour de Pologne on Saturday.
The 26 year-old Frenchman bagged his maiden professional win, attacking with Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) with 37km of the 125.5km stage to go, before riding off alone some 24km later.
The presence in the chasing group of three team mates, including stage 4 winner and overall leader Bart Lemmen, meant the pursuit was never truly committed and Barré was able to hold on. Eventually he beat Christian Scaroni (XDS-Astana) into second place, by 10 seconds, with Marco Brenner (Tudor Pro Cycling) in third.
Despite this, second place was enough for Scaroni to move into the overall lead, leading Barré by three seconds with only Sunday’s final stage time trial remaining.
With stage wins at the Vuelta Burgos and Bart Lemmen’s success in stage 4, it’s been an excellent week for Visma-Lease a bike, providing some consolation for their Tour de France mishaps. With Barré and Lemmen occupying the second and third steps of the GC podium, just three and five seconds behind Scaroni respectively, they will hope to take the general classification, though there are plenty of good time trialists behind them. However, those include a third Visma rider, Wilco Kelderman sitting 38 seconds off the lead.
More to follow…
How it unfolded
The queen stage of this year’s Tour de Pologne started in Bukovina Resort, finishing some 125.5km later at the nearby Bukovina Tatrzańska. While the distance might not have been anywhere near that of Friday’s fifth stage, won by UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s Jan Christen, but almost 3,000m of vertical ascent made for a tough day.
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The race began with the first of two second category climbs, but it was the four first category ascents that made the day particularly challenging, especially with the final 4km all uphill.
The race was aggressive from the start, a large group escaping almost the moment the flag dropped, with Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Walter Calzoni (Pinarello-Q36.5) taking 40 seconds onto the opening first category climb to Słodyczki. Another intermediate group struggled for traction, growing and shrinking as the climb wore on, what remained of the peloton within 20 seconds of the leaders as they crested the climb.
However, on the decsent the two leaders were soon joined by the Netcompany-Ineos pair of Sam Watson and Magnus Sheffield, Luca Vergallaito (Alpecin0Premier Tech), Allessandro Borgo (Bahrain Victorious), Valentin Madouas (Groupama_FDJ United), Steff Cras (Soudal-QuickStep) and Henri-François Renard-Haquin (Picnic-PostNL), with overall leader Bart Lemmen’s Visma-Lease a Bike team holding them close.
Only after 40km did the leaders’ advantage reach over 1.20, though the lumpy terrain meant they were unlikely to be allowed to much time ahead of the final circuit which included the brutal ascent of Ściana Bukovina. The climb was ridden three times and while the classified part was only 1.6km in length, sections of over 20% gradient ensured it would challenge all but the best.
Visma-Lease a Bike retained their stranglehold on the race and by the time the leading group reach the bottom of the climb, their deficit was less than one minute, while over the top that had been halved. What remained of the break was finally brought to heel on the second ascent, with 37.5km to go, before Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) went clear through the crowds of fans.
However, before he reached the top, Lemmen’s team mate, Louis Barré bridged to the Colombian. The pair worked to hard to build a lead, but with XDS-Astana on the front, their advantage never extended to more than 25 seconds and they reached the final ascent of Ściana Bukovina with just a handful of seconds.
Having the smaller amount of work, Barré attacked before they were caught, the Frenchman extending the lead to 24 seconds over the top, just 12.6km from the finish. Behind him multiple attacks from the chasing group were cancelled out as no one was willing to work with their rivals to bring Barré to heel.
In the end, with three riders in the group, XDS-Astana went to work, Diego Ulissi pulling on the front, but any concerted move came too late to prevent Barré’s success, the Frenchman taking 23 seconds into the final 2km.
Owen Rogers is an experienced journalist, covering the sport for various magazines and websites for more than 10 years.
Initially concentrating mainly on the women's sport, he has covered hundreds of race days on the ground and interviewed some of the sport's biggest names.
Living near Cambridge in the UK, when he's not working you'll find him either riding his bike or playing drums.
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