Tour de Pologne: Modolo wins stage 2

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The 900-metre downhill finish in Katowice in the Tour de Pologne is one of the fastest and most unusual finales on the WorldTour calendar, and it was Sacha Modolo (UAE Team Emirates) who emerged from a hotly-disputed bunch sprint to take victory on stage 2 on Sunday.

A regular part of the Tour de Pologne route, Katowice's broad, fast, runway-like downhill finishing straight, has only been won once by a non-sprinter in the last eight editions, when Taylor Phinney triumphed back in 2013. But on this occasion, as Katusha-Alpecin and Team Sky reeled in late attacker Petr Vakoc (Quick-Step Floors) on the final corner, there was little possibility of anything but an extremely high speed charge for the line deciding the stage.

Modolo launched what he later called a classic but late sprint, in which the added downhill speed was offset a little by the stiff headwind, pulling hard out of a little knot of riders on the right hand side of the peloton with some 150 metres to go.

As a wave of eight or nine sprinters, divided by relatively little thanks to the speed of the descent, approached the finish line spread across the road, Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) seemed too far back and was blocked in. Modolo faced late threats from Danny van Poppel (Sky), third on stage one, on his left, with the Dutchman's sibling and fellow sprinter Boy van Poppel (Trek-Segafredo) closing fast on Modolo's right. A well-timed lunge for the line gave the 30-year-old Modolo the victor, while Danny van Poppel took second and had the consolation prize of taking over in the leader's jersey from Sagan.

"There was a strong headwind so I had to wait for a while to make a move, but my teammate Roberto Ferrari was really good at leading me out and then I could go for it," said Modolo, whose previous best placing in the Tour de Pologne was in his race debut back in 2012, when he placed third behind Zdenek Stybar on a stage. "I might not have been among the top favourites here, but sometimes I can carve out a win for myself."

Although the stage finale was a dramatic one, the preceding 140 kilometres on another short, fast stage across southern Poland from the pretty little town of Tarnowskie Gori to the much bigger conurbation of Katowice had big crowds and plenty of support for the peloton, but regrettably little in the way of excitement.

Once again, and in a very similar fashion to the Tour de France, the first attack of the day managed to stick, with Martijn Keizer (LottoNL-Jumbo), also an attacker on stage one at Pologne, back off the front again in a breakaway of four riders. Quite apart from the numbers in the break, Keizer could be forgiven for thinking he was having a case of deja vu given the three other teams also represented were identical to stage one. Joonas Henttala was on hand for Novo Nordisk, CCC-Sprandi Polowice were represented by Adrian Kurek and Kamil Gradek was there for the Polish national team.

Reigning Polish national champion Kurek lasted the longest, holding a 1:30 advantage when he crossed the finish line with 51 kilometres to go but finally throwing in the towel 23 kilometres from the finish. Daniel Oss (BMC Racing) subsequently put in a lengthy dig and there were much briefer efforts to go clear from Bob Jungels (Quick Step Floor), Nathan Haas (Dimension Data) and finally Vakoc. But although Vakoc timed his move smartly to go clear just before the peloton started the brief, draggy climb that led onto the much faster descent back to the finish, Katowice was the second and last opportunity for the sprinters before the race heads into much hillier terrain on Monday, and there was no way they were going to miss it.

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