The gleaming golden helmet that already for life recognizes his status as an Olympic champion en route loses brightness in the white picon, where Richard Carapaz suffers and regrets so much accumulated effort, because of all the favorites of this return is the only one who competed with the best
On the tour until the last day and then go to Tokyo.
The season of him, between the podium of Paris and the Olympic gold, was already more than done and for that reason the presence of him on this lap he threw doubts, shot and his odometers in front of the freshness of other rivals, including those of his own
team.
It is always appropriate to place the asterisk of its combativity, of its term, of its determination, for its determination to turn up difficult situations.
But the reality is, today, unappealable: the first great test, he was too far from the calls to fight for the podium of Santiago.
Moreover, taking into account that the race was not broken, without attacks between the ‘roosters’, driven to rhythm towards the goal.
Only Valverde really squeezed the pins in the final kilometer and by then a long time ago that Carapaz had been dismissed from a still numerous group.
The movement of the Veteran Excampeon of the World served so that Enric Mas Suara had three seconds of income with others in a final movement and to pay for time other aspirants, such as CARTHY (21 seconds), Vlasov and Bardet (both 29).
López, Roglic, Yates, Landa, Ciccone and Bernal, in a great collective action of the Movistar, as it usually happens in these finals.
They were not all who are, but they are all those who were and the race brand and a gap in their third stage, by savable that is still.
But the protagonist of the day, outside of the big struggles, was a 34-year-old Estonian named Rein Taaramäe, a classic entertainment of the international squad who exhibited his strength to culminate a flight of eight men to which Roglic, and exlíder, gave his blessing
from very soon.
A decade after winning in Somiedo Lakes, five after kissing the glory also on the turn, Taaramäe enjoyed the best day of his career, with stage victory and a red jersey who is golden for the modest intermarché, avid of glory
In your first course among the best teams of the peloton.
And Roglic, happy to give up the lead and thus detach their colleagues from the responsibility to guide the platoon in the coming days.
The attitude of the Slovenian was clear since early, at a very long stage (202 km.) Whose only important difficulty was that final eight-kilometer ascension towards the white picon.
The eight fugitives, among which were the Spaniards Soto and Amezken came to enjoy nine minutes of advantage.
Time that was reduced when the Bahrain de Mikel Landa decided to harden the rhythm, in appearance an attack of Alavés that did not occur.
It was not the classic ascent to a first-class port in which the peloton is undone at velocity of vertigo.
There were many those who endured up to two final kilometers while Taaramäe, knowing enough for the stage-general combo, was detached from rivals ahead, alien to the suffering of a facepaz that the Ineos abandoned their fate.
“The road will put each one on your site,” he said before starting the distribution of hierarchies with Bernal on the British squad.
He hit.
