Tour du Limousin: Gaviria wins stage 2 from late breakaway

Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) won stage 2 of the Tour du Limousin after a breathless finale at Grand Etang de Saint-Estèph. The Colombian outsprinted Joel Suter (Bingoal-Wallonie Bruxelles) after he triggered the winning seven-man move with a fierce acceleration on the rolling run-in.

Suter's second place was enough to lift him into the overall lead. The Swiss rider is level on time with previous leader Luca Wackermann (Vini Zabú-KTM) but takes the jersey by dint of his higher placings on the first two stages.

Kévin Ledanois (Team Arkéa-Samsic) took third place on the stage at two seconds, just ahead of Michael Storer (Sunweb), while the fragmented peloton came home at 7 seconds.

Gaviria went on the offensive with 9km to go as the peloton was lined out after the ascent of the Côte de Nontron-La Manganèze, and he persisted in tracking aggressive counter-attacks from the AG2R La Mondiale duo Quentin Jauregui and Geoffrey Bouchard.

Seven riders were at the head of the race beneath the flamme rouge, with Suter, Gaviria, Jauregui, Bouchard, Storer and Ledanois joined by Alessandro Fedeli (Nippo Delko One Provence).

Suter had designs on the yellow jersey, and he delivered a powerful seated acceleration with a shade under a kilometre to go. Gaviria was tucked on his wheel, wise to the opportunity that was presenting itself, and he proceeded to swoop past Suter in the sprint to claim the stage win on his 27th birthday.

"I'm really happy, it's my 27th birthday and I wanted to give myself a present," Gaviria told L'Équipe TV afterwards. "We wanted to try yesterday but the penultimate climb was too hard for me. It was a complicated finish. I knew I had to take the descent on the front, I tried and I was able to win a very nice stage. For tomorrow, I don't know. I spent a lot of energy today."

How it unfolded

The stage was animated by an early break featuring Adrien Guillonnet (St-Michel-Auber 93), Romain Combaud (Nippo Delko One Provence), Laurenz Rex (Bingoal-Wallonie-Bruxelles), Sergei Chernetskii (Gazprom-Rusvelo), Jokin Aranburu Arruti (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Laurent Pichon (Team Arkéa-Samsic). They escaped in the opening kilometres and combined to establish an initial lead of three minutes.

Comboud sat up from the break after picking up six seconds in bonuses, while Chernetstkii also relented in turn, leaving the four survivors to push their buffer out to 3:45 as they reached the midpoint of the stage.

The heavy roads, rolling terrain and heat took their toll as the afternoon progressed, and the injection of pace from the Vini Zabú-KTM team of the race leader Wackermann saw the break's advantage begin to crumble, while riders began to lose contact with the rear of the peloton.

Groupama-FDJ and Cofidis later took up the reins as the terrain grew more rugged, with Nathan Haas particularly prominent, and more riders were jettisoned out the back of the bunch, including Lilian Calmejane (Total Direct Energie), who is still recovering from his crash at the Route d'Occitanie.

Out in front, Aranburu lost contact with the breakaway ahead of the Côte de Tartou and despite a late rally from Pichon, the rest of the escapees were swept up with 16km or so remaining. With a reduced peloton and punchy terrain on the run-in, Gaviria sensed that a bunch sprint was hardly an inevitability. He positioned himself towards the head of the race on the Côte de Nontron-La Manganèze in the finale, then jumped on every acceleration that followed over the other side.

His industry was rewarded with his fifth victory of 2020 and his second since the season resumed in August. Gaviria will forgo the Tour de France in favour of October's Giro d'Italia, where he will look to add to the five stages he won in his first two participations.

"We're still a long way from the Giro but there are a lot of races before then where I want to do well," Gaviria said.