Tour of Poland: Majka wins in Bukowina

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Tinkoff-Saxo’s Rafal Majka secured his second stage win at the Tour of Poland during stage 6 on Friday. He won the mountain stage into Bukowina Tatrzanska solo with a 10-second gap on Movistar teammates Benat Intxausti in second and Jon Izaguirre in third place.

“My teammates proved one more time how strong they are, although they were tired," Majka said. "For my part, I knew I had to go fast in the final kilometers so I just stayed in a good position and controlled the other riders until the last climb. Then I could go full gas. The people shouting my name on the roads gave me goosebumps. That's my second stage win on the Tour of Poland so I am already happy. I don't want to make big plans about tomorrow's time trial and the general classification. If I lose, I lose and if not, I will be super happy to win the Tour of Poland overall.”

The Polish rider moved into the overall race lead by 18 seconds ahead of Intxausti, and is now 22 seconds ahead of Izaguirre as the race heads into the stage 7 time trial on Saturday in Kraków.

Majka made his winning attack out of a small but decisive group on the final climb over the wall of Bukovina and left all of his rivals behind. Omega Pharma-QuickStep’s Petr Vakoc went into the stage wearing the yellow jersey but lost it when he was unable to hang onto the blistering pace.

“Even if I lost the leader's jersey, it was a really good day for me because I gave everything I could," Vakoc said. "In fact, the course was a little bit too hard for me. I am quite happy I could come back between the first and second lap. Then I stayed in the first group until the last climb. Then I tried to lose as less time as possible but I was so tired. Hopefully, I can do a good time trial tomorrow and be part of final top eight of the race.”

How it unfolded

The sixth stage of the Tour of Poland took the riders on a 180km race from Bukovina Terma Hotel Spa to Bukowina Tatrzanska, and the riders welcomed the day’s slight cloud cover instead of the rain-soaked race through the mountains the previous day. The stage’s circuit-style race opened with two intermediate sprints at 12.8km and 18km into the race, where points were awarded to Salvatore Puccio (Team Sky) and Pawel Cieslik (Poland).

A seven-rider breakaway formed early on that included Maciej Paterski (CCC Polsat Polkowice), Sergey Lagutin (RusVelo), Christian Meier (Orica-GreenEdge), Damiano Caruso (Cannondale), Sergey Chernetsky (Katusha), Johannes Frohlinger (Giant-Shimano), Alexis Vuillermoz (Ag2r-La Mondiale) and Davide Malacarne (Europcar).

“I joined all the attempts of attacks in the first part of the race to make sure I could join the breakaway," Vuillermoz said. "After 30km we managed to go away and we had a good collaboration. That was a very tough circuit and in order to climb the steepest hill, I should have put a small gear of 29 instead of 27. It cost me a lot of energy and I paid the price later in the race. But I am happy with my day.”

The undulating stage dealt the riders a total of eight climbs, two climbs on each of the four large circuit, all with mountain points available at the top. Paterski, who led the mountain classification at the start of the day, was uncontested on the climbs and picked up full points atop the first five, bolstering his point tally and sealing his lead in the pink climber’s jersey.

With 60km to go, the breakaway group held a gap of 1:13 minutes on the main field. Francesco Gavazzi (Astana) embarked on a lone chase in pursuit of the breakaway but his effort only brought him halfway across and he remained in no-man’s land between the breakaway and the field.

Omega Pharma-QuickStep led the race along narrow roads through the rolling green fields for its overall leader Vakoc, who had a one-second advantage over Majka at the start of the sixth stage.

Majka, having shown his strength in the mountains by winning stage five, had the most to gain from the mountainous circuit race and his team Tinkoff-Saxo eventually took control of the race, sending its riders to the front of the field on the ascents and keeping a close watch over its GC rivals.

Gavazzi’s attempt to bridge across to the breakaway proved fruitless and the Italian was picked up by the Tinkoff-Saxo-led peloton with 40km to go.

Up in the breakaway, Lagutin wrestled Paterski for mountain points on the sixth climb while Meier continued his consistent top-three performances on the ascents and took the third-place points.

Tinkoff-Saxo quickened the pace, with help from one other Omega Pharma-QuickStep rider, and brought the gap to the breakaway down to under a minute within 30km to the finish.

Meier, Vuillermoz and Caruso attacked over the penultimate climb leaving the remaining breakaway riders behind. The peloton swallowed up the stragglers, under Tinkoff-Saxo charge, and closed the gap to the last three riders out front. Meier picked up the points at the top of the ascent right before being caught by the field.

The field was all back together with 25km to go, as the race headed for the final two climbs on the last circuit giving way to a series of attacks against the dominant Tinkoff-Saxo team.

Davide Villella (Cannondale) was the first to make a move, forcing Majka to get out of his saddle and chase. Katusha’s Giampaolo Caruso was the next to go but he was caught by Majka along with Izaguirre, Robert Gesink and Lars Petter Nordhaug (Belkin), Przemyslaw Niemiec (Lampre-Merida), Wout Poels (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) and Warren Barguil (Giant-Shimano). Despite the horsepower in the group, Majka received little help from the other riders.

Race leader Vakoc was left behind and forced to chase with his sole teammate Gianluca Brambilla from the remnants of the main field and several other general classification riders who did not make the decisive move.

Barguil was clearly the fastest descender and opened a gap over the small group by the bottom. He looked back and waited for his breakaway companions and soon several other riders had made their way across to the break. Vakoc was one of those riders, however, he fell off pace a second time on the final climb.

Majka used up his last remaining teammate, Oliver Zaugg, before attacking on the last climb up Bukovina and riding away from his rivals. He rode over the most difficult part of the climb alone, gaining time in the overall classification. Movistar teammates Izaguirre and Intxausti followed Majka but the pair were not able to close the gap before the finish line.

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