Mikel Landa enjoyed a quiet day in the bunch and he will now switch his attention to Sunday’s summit finish.
The longest stage of this year’s race, 200.5 kilometers from Villafranca del Bierzo to Vilabino, was one that on paper should have belonged to a breakaway. That’s also what the six men who attacked after the start had in mind, but they soon found out the peloton had other plans, allowing them to take their maximum advantage to just two minutes.
Puerto de Leitariegos, a 22.8km first-category climb averaging 4.5% was the main difficulty of the day, and it was there that the escapees were pegged back. Before the top, T-Rex Quick-Step’s Mattia Cattaneo moved to the front to position Mikel Landa for the descent, where the reduced bunch remained as one until the finish. There, Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) took the victory, as Landa concluded in the same time and kept his place in the top five.
The last stage of the second week will bring one of the hardest climbs of this edition, Cuitu Negru, which returns for the first time since 2012, when our team celebrated a memorable win of Dario Cataldo from the breakaway.
Photo credit: ©Tim De Waele / Getty Images
