Tour of Poland: Majka wins first mountain stage

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After his impressive double stage wins in the Tour de France, and the mountains classification jersey, Rafal Majka carried the weight of his home nation in the Tour of Poland, but despite the enormous pressure, the Tinkoff-Saxo rider came good on the first day in the mountains, to win stage 5 from Movistar duo Beñat Intxausti and Ion Izagirre.

"I must say a big thank you to my teammates because they worked from the first to the last climb for me and they also sent one guy into the breakaway," Majka said. "I am very happy to win but it was not an easy stage, with a fast final ascent on the big ring. I felt a little bit tired. But the people standing on the road and screaming 'Majka! Go! Go! Go!' gave me an extra motivation. Tomorrow will be hard again and we will need to fight."

Race leader Petr Vakoc (Omega Pharma-Quickstep), who began the day 37 seconds ahead of Majka, lost contact in the final kilometer, but rallied, coming to the line just 26 seconds behind. Although Majka gained a 10-second time bonus on the line, he just missed taking the leader's jersey from Vakoc by a single second.

Intxausti is now third at five seconds.

Keeping the yellow jersey was a big surprise for Vakoc, who was initially told that the gap to Majka had been 27 seconds at the line. In the tie breaker he would have lost to the Polish rider.

"I thought at first that I had lost the yellow jersey because I saw a time difference of 27 seconds on the finish line, and someone told me that I had lost it," Vakoc said. "So I went back to my hotel and took a shower. Then I saw on Twitter that I still was in the lead and I got a phone call from my press officer. So I went back to the podium as quick as I could! I am very happy to hold on my jersey. I still hope I can have it tomorrow evening but I know it will be hard. I definitely will do my best."

Intxausti stressed the importance of being up front in the finale, and the six second time bonus he won for second place will be important for the two stages ahead.

"The team is very strong and we have three options with Amador, Izaguirre and me," Intxausti said. "It's possible Majka will get isolated tomorrow. With the stage and the ultimate time trial I think I have more opportunities to win."

How it unfolded

The 190km stage from Zakopane to Štrbské Pleso in Slovakia was the first chance for the overall contenders to test their legs, and the start could not have been a bigger contrast between the hot and sunny, flat previous four stages. A cool, light rain fell on the peloton as they made their way into the Carpathian mountains and across the Polish border into Slovakia.

With a fast start to the stage, it took a while before the day's escape formed, and with the general classification at stake, no group would gain more than a couple minutes.

The Polish CCC Polkowice team started the hostilities, with mountains leader Maciej Paterski keen to extend his lead in that classification, in light of the three category 1 climbs at the finish, and a category 2 and category 3 climb in the first half of the stage.

Paterski was joined by Jimmy Engoulvent (Team Europcar) and Sebastian Lander (BMC), but other groups kept shooting off the front of the peloton. Yaroslav Popovych (Trek), Murilo Fischer (FDJ), Matteo Bono (Lampre-Merida), Marco Haller (Katusha), Hugo Houle (AG2R) and Poland's Pawel Bernas made the bridge.

Paterski claimed the top mountain points on the climb at Huty, 67.9km into the stage, and Bernas claimed both sprint points at 92.1 and 102.2km before the climbing started in earnest. While the breakaway enjoyed its maximum gap of 3:50 in the valley, the peloton used the flatter roads to begin to close it down.

The rain began to fall more heavily as the peloton neared the two 25km finishing circuits, all containing the category 1 Štrbské Pleso climb. On the first ascent, an attack came from Trek's Fabio Felline, who pulled Bob Jungels up to the breakaway, then later dropped off the pace. Other successful bridgers included Adriano Malori (Lampre-Merida), Johan Le Bon (FDJ), Manuele Mori (Lampre-Merida), Sergey Chernetsky (Katusha) and notably Rory Sutherland (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Christian Meier (Orica-GreenEdge).

Meanwhile, up ahead, Paterski and Lander battled for the mountain prime, with the Pole winning out, but his time out front would soon end.

The climb did damage to both the composition of the breakaway and its gap. On the descent, they had a slim 45 seconds, and riders began to drop back to the bunch. First to go was Felline and Haller, then Engoulvent gave up the ghost.

An attack from Meier on the second trip up the climb further detonated the breakaway, and the pressure from the peloton began to pick the escapees off one by one.

Sergio Henao (Sky) attacked from the field but could not reach Meier. The Orica-GreenEdge man held his lead until just 14km to go, but the final ascent proved to be his undoing.

Johannes Frohlinger (Giant-Shimano) and Marek Rutkiewicz (CCC Polkowice) were the next to attempt to bridge on the long, gradual ascent, but they too were pulled back in, just before Meier was caught.

Robert Gesink (Belkin) showed his form was on the rise, and he put in a little dig as the leaders were caught, but it did not last and he was countered by RusVelo's Ilnur Zakarin.

Garmin Sharp's Ryder Hesjedal tried to break up the 50-strong group with several surges, but a last-gasp attack with 2km to go went nowhere, and he was countered by defending champion Pieter Weening (Orica-GreenEdge). Spanish champion Izagirre chased him down, but then the Movistar tactics fell apart.

Coming into the finale, Gianluca Brambilla (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) led out the sprint, with Intxausti taking over, but both were passed by Majka, as Izagirre then found an extra burst of energy to come around for second.

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