After a bruising experience the previous afternoon, Bora-Hansgrohe hit back on stage 3 of the Tour of the Alps, with Lennard Kamna skipping away to take the victory before Aleksandr swept up behind to make it a team 1-2 atop the Passo San Valentino.
Both riders were dropped from the lead group towards the end of stage 2, losing valuable time, but they bit back on Wednesday's longer final climb, setting the pace before launching Kamna 6km from the summit.
The German was joined a couple of kilometres later by Alexander Cepeda (EF-EasyPost) and he leaned on the overly-generous Colombian before hitting him with the sucker punch in the last 500 metres.
Cepeda was unable to hang on for second place, with Vlasov surging from an elite group of just five riders, which finished just a few seconds down. It was the race leader Tao Geoghegan Hart who had formed that group when he attacked 2km from the summit, and he took fourth place on the day, just behind Cepeda.
Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious) and Hugh Carthy (EF-EasyPost) were the other members of that group, with Lorenzo Fortunato (Eolo-Kometa) just trailed off towards the end.
"I'm really happy it worked out today and I could take my second victory here. Last year was kind of a breakthrough for me and I'm just really glad about it," Kamna said.
"For me it was the only option to go a little earlier. I knew I could do good speed but also I was lucky the EF guy joined and did quite a good pace for me."
Tao Geoghegan Hart successfully defended his overall lead on a day where Ineos' dominance slipped slightly. EF controlled for much of the day, before Bora dictated proceedings on the 15.5km final climb. Ineos appeared to be on the back foot as Thymen Arensman, Laurens De Plus, and Geraint Thomas faded, with Pavel Sivakov straining to keep things under control. After winning the first two stages with late dashes, Geoghegan Hart was drawn into an early hit-out, and single-handedly shredded a lead group of nine down to four by the line.
There was no hat trick but it was a strong defence of his green jersey, with a 22-second gap to Carthy, who moved up to second after Felix Gall (AG2R Citroen) lost ground. Haig is third at 28 seconds, while Kamna rose five places to sixth at 45 seconds, just ahead of Vlasov.
How it unfolded
The 162.5km stage set out from Ritten in unusual fashion, kicking off at over 1000 metres of altitude and rising a few more in the opening kilometres before a long 30km descent into the valley. As such, it took a long time for any breakaway to go clear, and it only did so after a further 20km on the flat.
In there were 12 riders: Luks Postlberger (Austria), Jasha Sutterlin (Bahrain Victorious), Juri Hollmann (Movistar), Andrea Vendrame (AG2R Citroën Team), Lorenzo Milesi (DSM), Joe Dombrowski (Astana Qazaqstan), Riccardo Lucca (Green Project-Bardiani), Juaristi Txomin (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Giovani Carboni (Kern Pharma), Alexandre Hajek (Austria), Liam Johnson (Trinity Racing) and Mattia Bais (Eolo-Kometa)
They built a lead of seven minutes as Postlberger won the first intermediate sprint and they approached the first climb of Lago di Cei (9.7km at 7.7%) after 100km. The breakaway stayed together over the top but at a cost; their lead was slashed in half as EF took control of the peloton.
On the descent, Sutterlin pushed on but was brought back in the valley, where the group managed to push their advantage back out to 4:30, offering faint hope. After around 20km in the valley, Postlberger and Vendrame looked to anticipate with an attack ahead of the final climb, but the cream still rose to the top.
Dombrowski soon skipped away, joining Vendrame at the head of the race before asking for a turn, not getting one, and then easing clear to go solo with 11km to go. At that point, the peloton were at 1:25, and the US rider made a huge effort to keep them at bay and keep the stage win as a possibility.
Bora took the reins on the climb and started to shred the bunch into a GC group, with Matteo Fabbro and Patrick Konrad doing the gruntwork. When the latter pulled over with 6km to go, Kamna made his move and quickly raced away. Ineos' grin on proceedings was called into question when Cepeda skipped clear soon after, and Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) jumped as well, although would not make it to the front.
Cepeda reached Kamna and launched some stinging accelerations to try and get rid of him as they approached Dombrowski, who clung in but ultimately had to give way. Cepeda happily took all the work with Kamna in the wheel as he tried to maintain a 15-second gap over a GC group that was down to 10: Sivakov, Geoghegan Hart, Carthy, Haig, Vlasov, Fortunato, Buitrago, Gall, and the surprise packages of Max Poole (DSM) and Matthew Riccitello (Israel-Premier Tech).
When that gap went to 18 seconds, Geoghegan Hart hit out. Not minding the riders in his wheel, he chased hard and burned most of them off, apart from Vlasov, Haig, and Carthy. The green jersey was well defended, but a third stage win was out of reach as Kamna said thank you very much to Cepeda and galloped away to victory in the final 500 metres.
Results
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