Friday’s penultimate stage of the 65th Itzulia Basque Country was also the queen stage, and Paul Seixas added to his race lead once more while winning a track trick of victories. Seixas beat Florian Lipowitz in a two-up sprint, the latter rider now in second place. Five days ago the Decathlon rider had zero WorldTour triumphs.
Preliminaries
It was unlikely that anyone could surmount Paul Seixas’ 2:19 lead, but 1:02 separated second from ninth.
The Course
Eight categorized climbs were spread evenly along 176 km around Eibar. The crucial climbs for attacks were the Cat. 1 ascents: Krabelin just past the midway point of the day, and penultimate challenge Izua. Both were over 9 percent in grade. Final climb Urkaregi crested 9 km from the finish line.
Baptiste Veistroffer, last seen leading the Volta a Catalunya’s mountains classification before Giulio Ciccone took over, was first up the Climb 1. He was mobbed by a large breakaway containing both of the race’s Canadians, Michael Leonard and Hugo Houle. However, Veistroffer took off with Steven Kruijswijk and by the time they started Krabelin, they were a minute ahead of the Canadian chase and 2:30 in front of the peloton.
Veistroffer left Kruijswijk on Krabelin’s narrow opening slopes. Lipowitz made a move, but Seixas was quickly onto him, the duo weaving through the Canadian chase. There was a huge shake up, and by the peak, Kévin Vauquelin was solo 16 seconds ahead of Seixas, Lipowitz, Primož Roglič and several others, only Matthias Skjelmose and Ben Tulett missing out of the top 10.
Vauquelin was pulled back on the way to Cat. 3 Trabakua. Marc Soler, who had been active over the last 20 km, burst from the Seixas group, Ben Healy joining in. The duo had rolling terrain on the way to Izua.
Soler and Healy started up Izua 30 seconds to the good. But Seixas had the bit between his teeth and they were soon absorbed.
Soon it was only Seixas and Lipowitz, Roglič doggedly chasing with Javier Romo. When Romo caught up before the peak, he overlapped wheels with Lipowitz and crashed. Roglič and Romo still chased on Urkareg but it looked more unlikely they’d make it over. It was white-knuckle stuff for Seixas and Lipowitz on the descent.
It would be a two-up sprint between the riders now one-two in the GC. Lipowitz swung out from behind…
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