The breakaway tried again, but the bunch prevailed in the end on the penultimate day.<\/p>\n
Deemed the queen stage of this year\u2019s edition, the fifth leg of Itzulia Basque Country had everything: eight ranked climbs \u2013 many of them boasting some incredibly steep gradients \u2013 almost 4000 vertical meters, and some technical descents. This made for a selective day of racing, one that widened the gaps between the general classification contenders.<\/p>\n
Once again, there was a huge interest in making it in the breakaway, and after more than 50 kilometers, a sizable group managed to get away. Just like Thursday, Steff Cras and Mauri Vansevenant were in the front group for Soudal Quick-Step, helping the breakaway establish a four-minute margin. Initially, it appeared they would succeed, but a rapid increase of pace in the peloton led to the group being overhauled more than 50 kilometers from the finish.<\/p>\n
Vansevenant did his best, making it into one of the numerous chasing groups, and once again finished the stage \u2013 won by Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) \u2013 as the highest-ranked rider of our team, moving up a place in the overall standings.<\/p>\n
Photo credit: \u00a9Tim De Waele \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The breakaway tried again, but the bunch prevailed in the end on the penultimate day. Deemed the queen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-598433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}