Joseph Blackmore (Israel-Premier Tech) pushed past Jhonatan Restrepo (Team Polti Kometa) in the final 100 metres and captured the stage 6 victory on Mont Kigali at the Tour du Rwanda on Friday.
From among a select group of five on the final climb, Ilkhan Dostiyev (Astana Qazaqstan Development Team) secured third place, five seconds behind the two-up sprint on the summit. Nahom Zerai (Eritrea) finished another three seconds later for fourth and Restrepo’s teammate Germán Gómez took fifth, 18 seconds back.
With the victory on his 21st birthday, Blackmore moved into the GC lead. He leads by 11 seconds over Dostiyev and is 13 seconds up on Restrepo.
“Some good birthday watts today,” Blackmore said on the team’s social media. “Every climb was pressing, attacks all day and no one really got away. I tried to conserve myself as much as possible until the last climb when I could see some guys were dropping. Ruben was in the radio to keep it chill and it worked out for the last sprint to have some energy left.
“I remembered from last dear that it was a along sprint up here, so I just waited until the last guys opened up with 200 metres to go and I waited until the last 50 metres. It’s a great start to the racing year.”
The stage from Musanze to Mont Kigali was just 93km, but with three categorised climbs filling the profile. The opening climb of Côte de Kivuruga was completed in the opening 20km. Chris Froome (Israel-Premier Tech) launched an attack after passing the sprint at Nyirangarama, but it was closed down by the peloton after a 7km chase on the descent.
On the long, uphill approach to Côte de Muhondo, a group of 18 riders broke away from the peloton, led by stage 5 winner Pierre Latour (TotalEnergies) and race leader William Junior Lecerf (Soudal-QuickStep Devo Team). The duo scooped up KOM points at Muhondo’s Crest, which Latour would deposit with the first KOM prize to take over the mountain classification at the end of the day.
Overnight leader Lecerf slipped down to fourth on GC after finishing the stage in 14th, 57 seconds down.
"I only missed the last ten metres,” Restrepo said about his runner-up finish. “I thank Germán for the tremendous work and also Andrea Garosio and Manuel Peñalver."
Stage 7 on Saturday is a hilly 158km from Rukomo to Kayonza.
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