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Vuelta a San Juan Internacional 2019: Stage 6

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Hello and welcome to our live coverage of stage 6 of the Vuelta a San Juan. Today's largely flat penultimate stage is 153.5km long and starts and ends at the Autódromo El Villicúm north of San Juan.

 

Today's stage is set to kick off in around 20 minutes. It's an out and back course which begins and ends with a lap of the racetrack.

It could be one for the powerful sprinters, a breakaway, or one for the puncheurs today. It all depends on how the lumps at the end are raced.

And they're off! The penultimate stage of the Vuelta a San Juan has begun.

After yesterday's stage, Winner Anacona (Movistar) leads the general classification. He's in the white jersey and – with a 41-second advantage over second-placed Julian Alaphilippe – looks certain to carry it to the end of the race.

Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-Quick Step) also holds a slender two-second lead over Gino Mäder (Dimension Data) in the U23 competition.

153km remaining from 153km

Felipe Peñalosa (Chile) is the first attacker of the day.

Antonio Cabrera (Chile) is the first attacker of the day.

A number of other riders are also attempting to get away, of course. It might be a while until an acceptable break forms.

A rather large group got away, but has been caught already, just as I had started to identify them. Time to try again.

142km remaining from 153km

140km remaining from 153km

Another rider from Agrupacion Virgen De Fatima has joined them. It's Germán Tivani, who was in the break yesterday too.

There has been a crash in the peloton. Ricardo Paredes (Cuba) has hit the dirt on the side of the road. He looks ok, though.

The four up front look pretty well established at this point. There's no time gap yet, but the peloton is slowing down – they're spread across the road.

Ignacio Espinoza (Start Team Gusto) has gone on the attack in a bid to bridge up to the break. It's the first time I've seen a rider from the Bolivian team on the attack during the race.

130km remaining from 153km

124km remaining from 153km

There's a lot of orange in this race between the mountain classification jersey, Nippo Vini Fantini Faizanè, Asociacion Civil Mardan, and Municipalidad de Rawson Somos Todos. Pity CCC didn't make the trip, really.

Movistar have moved to the front of the peloton now. They're riding in service of race leader Winner Anacona.

115km remaining from 153km

108km remaining from 153km

Oh, the chase group is out there somehwere, according to the tv graphics. We haven't seen them in a while, though.

100km remaining from 153km

96km remaining from 153km

92km remaining from 153km

There really isn't a lot going on at the moment. The next event, aside from the feed zone, is the intermediate sprint coming in over 60km.

It's started to rain a bit, with spots showing up on the camera and the road looking a bit slick where the chase group are. They're slowing down to take on some food.

The rain is coming down a lot heavier now. Still dry at the finish though.

75km remaining from 153km

Leonardo Rodriguez was the rider who dropped back to the peloton, I think.

67km remaining from 153km

The peloton has sped up in the rain. The gap to the break is down to 4:40 now.

57km remaining from 153km

50km remaining from 153km

46km remaining from 153km

38km remaining from 153km

We're just over 10km from the second and final intermediate sprint of the stage now.

29km remaining from 153km

Under three minutes now, with 24km left to race.

No competition for the intermediate sprint as the break just power across the line.

Zamora, Tivani and Quintana was the order over the line.

19km remaining from 153km

Full gas for the peloton now as they hunt down the break. The gap is melting away down towards the two-minute mark.

15km remaining from 153km

Will the peloton catch the break? It looked a foregone conclusion before but now two minutes seems a lot to ask over 14km.

Zamora looked in good sprinting shape when he won the first intermediate sprint of the day, so could be a decent tip to win should the break make it to the line.

9km remaining from 153km

8km remaining from 153km

6km remaining from 153km

The peloton can see the break on this long straight road, but they're still a minute down. Barring disaster, the win will be contested by the breakaway trio.

4km remaining from 153km

Diaz, Zamora and Tivani probably didn't have this in their mind when they were rolling around this same track a few hours ago.

1km remaining from 153km

Zamora is still on the front. Will he lead out for Tivani?

The final straight now, and Tivani launches first!

The peloton rolls in just over ten seconds behind the trio.

Here's the top ten on the stage.

Winner Anacona holds on to his lead. He finished 33rd, 18 seconds down. Julian Alaphilippe finished ninth on the stage, six seconds ahead of Anacona.

It's Tivani's victory win since June last year, when he won the first stage and overall at the 2.2 ranked Tour de Serbia.

Here's a great shot of Tivani celebrating as he crossed the line, via the Vuelta a San Juan Twitter account.

The stage result graphics had suggested that Gino Mäder (Dimension Data) would be taking over the green U23 jersey today, but Remco Evenepoel just received it on the podium, so it looks like the initial results were wrong.

All the jerseys remain on the same shoulders tonight.

No change in the top ten on the general classification either.

There's no change in the top ten on the general classification either.

Tomorrow's stage is another flat one. It's 141.3km long and consists of nine laps of a flat circuit around San Juan. Not the most thrilling end to the race, but we should see the big sprint showdown that we expected today.

And that's all from us today. Be sure to come back tomorrow for our live coverage from the final stage of the 2019 Vuelta a San Juan!

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