Tour of Poland 2014 – Stage 3 Preview

By David Hunter

Stage 2 Recap

Petr Vakoc pulled off the best Tony Martin impression and he soloed to his first win for OPQS. The young Czech rider was part of a group of 3, that seemed to be controlled by the peloton. AG2R were holding them at 4/5 minutes for most of the day, but then decided to stop working. Lampre and Orica did take up the chase but they seriously misjudged it. Vakoc attacked his breakaway companions, after the final intermediate sprint, and was very strong. Leading the peloton home was Michael Matthews, who celebrated as he thought he’d won! Another missed opportunity for the sprinters.

Stage 3 Kielce – Rzeszow 174km

At last, a day under 200km.

After 2 long stages and a 200km drive after stage 2, the riders will be happy to see a stage of 174km. Yet again, the finish is a circuit.

The finishing straight is long and without difficulty, but can any team control the finish?

The end of the stage is slightly uphill but nothing for the riders to worry about.

Again we will get a morning break. The difference is that OPQS will want to keep the yellow jersey on the shoulders of Vakoc. They will maintain a reachable gap to the break, unless there is no threat on GC. With 50km remaining it will be up to the sprinters teams to close the race down, something they couldn’t do today.

Due to all the crashes there are a number of strong riders way down on GC: Bobridge, Hupond, Norman Hansen, Le Bon, Gatto, Beppu, Malacarne, Tiralongo, Veikkanen, Ignatenko and Meyer. The breaks in stages 1 and 2 have featured a lot of local riders, not many from the big teams. After the success of Vakoc today, I wonder if any of these riders will fancy a go at it tomorrow.

If we get a sprint finish, the lack of proper lead out men make the end of the stage a mess. Matthews demonstrated that he has good legs and he’ll be very hard to beat. Looking at the other sprinters, only Sacha Modolo is capable of beating him, but has failed to sprint so far. Most of the sprinters have been a disaster so far!

Prediction time…

Surely they can’t mess it up again! I say we get a sprint and a battle between Modolo and Matthews, with the Aussie taking the win.

David Hunter

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