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100km to go
37km gone and we reach the bottom of the Azurki descent. It’s now time for the Gorla climb, which is 9.6km long at 5.7%.
We have 12 riders reported in the front group now:
Steven Kruijswijk, Attila Valter (Jumbo-Visma)
Dani Martinez (Ineos Grenadiers)
Marc Hirschi (UAE Team Emirates)
Esteban Chaves (EF Education-EasyPost)
Bruno Armirail (Groupama-FDJ)
Ruben Guerreiro (Movistar)
Eddie Dunbar (Jayco-AlUla)
Valentin Paret-Peintre (AG2R)
Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-Hansgrohe)
Harm Vanhoucke (DSM)
Rein Taaramae (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty)
Kruijswijk led the race over the top of the Azkuri climb.
Over the top of the Azurki climb and these riders have opened two minutes on the peloton.
Rein Taaramae (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) is another rider up the road. We’ll bring you the full and final composition shortly as it looks like this is sticking.
Those two groups have merged in the upper slopes of the climb, but Grossschartner and Gebreigzabhier have been dropped.
Marc Hirschi (UAE) is also on the move.
We have another group going clear of the bunch now. In there we see:
James Knox, Andrea Bagioli (Soudal-QuickStep)
Dani Martinez (Ineos)
Eddie Dunbar (Jayco-AlUla)
Amanuel Gebreigzabhier (Trek-Segafredo)
Interesting to see two Jumbo riders in there, and two strong ones at that. Vingegaard is using two domestiques as pawns who can potentially be called upon later on today. It shows the Dutch team aren’t going to purely try and stifle and control this race, but roll with its inherent chaos.
We have a strong nine-man move going clear:
Steven Kruijswijk, Attila Valter (Jumbo-Visma)
Valentin Paret-Peintre (AG2R)
Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-Hansgrohe)
Harm Vanhoucke (DSM)
Esteban Chaves (EF Education-EasyPost)
Bruno Armirail (Groupama-FDJ)
Ruben Guerreiro (Movistar)
Felix Großschartner (UAE Team Emirates)
We have more attacks on Azurki, which should see some sort of break form.
We reach the top of Elkorrieta and Caja Rural’s Jon Barrenetxea, who’s already in the mountains jersey, skips away to bolster his lead in that classification.
These climbs should provide the launchpad for a breakaway but we should see some big names try to move early on a treacherous finale.
After that, it’s pretty much straight onto the more serious task of the cat-1 Azurki, which measures 5.1km at 7.4%
We’re about to hit the first climb, the short cat-3 Elkorrieta.
It’s 2.6km at an average gradient of 6.7%
After 10km we start the climbing fest, and it barely lets up, with seven significant climbs on today’s menu.
Jimmy Jansens (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Nicolas Prodhomme (AG2R) are the first attackers but it’s a zippy start and no one is going anywhere for now.
The stage is waved underway and this has the potential to be a breathless final day of racing.
Hello and welcome to Cyclingnews’ live coverage of the final stage of the 2023 Itzulia Basque Country
