Adriano Malori won stage 5, the individual time trial, of the 2014 Tour de San Luís in San Luís, Argentina today.
Malori set a winning time of 22:11 along today’s 19.2 kilometer course, with Phinney finishing second at just under three seconds, and Jorge Giacinti coming in third at 29 seconds behind.
Meanwhile, as a result of today’s stage, Phil Gaimon ceded the leader’s jersey to Nairo Quintana.
Quintana now leads Gaimon by 26 seconds heading into tomorrow’s decisive summit finish at Mirador del Sol, with Sergio Godoy in third position at 1:01 back.
Apparently, the pre-race favorite, Taylor Phinney experienced equipment problems during the race – that may have lead to the Italian rider’s slightly better time of 2.7 seconds over the American.
According to Phinney’s mechanic, Ian Sherbourne, the American was unable to shift into his 11-tooth cog during the stage.
“It wouldn’t go into the 11 is what he said. We checked it right now and it dropped into the 11 fine,” Sherbourne said. “It’s also one of those differences between when you adjust something in the stand, you’re obviously not putting 500 watts through it. That’s why we usually have them do the with the full race setup and check it out and, ideally, inform us if there’s any situation.”
Phinney blamed his result on his own decision to forgo a 55-tooth or larger front chainring.
“I personally am quite disappointed,” he said. “I definitely wanted to win today. I made a tactical error on my part by not asking the mechanics to put a 55- or 56-tooth chainring on my front set. You know, I rode it this morning and thought it wouldn’t be necessary, but I got up to 75, 78K an hour on the downhill section and had to stop pedaling a couple times.”
Regardless, Phinney said he did not want to make excuses and credited Malori for his win in the first big TT showdown among the sport’s top teams in 2014.
“I knew Malori would be strong, but I’m quite disappointed,” said Phinney. “My power was there in the time trial, my pacing strategy was good, just not having those extra gears on the way down, that cost you some extra seconds. Whether that cost me the win, we’ll never know, but it’s pretty personally disappointed.”
In the race for the overall lead, Quintana led Gaimon by 15 seconds at the intermediate time check point, and held on enough to wrest the leader’s from him.
The Tour de San Luís continues tomorrow with stage 6 – a 184 kilometer route from Las Chacras to Merlo. The penultimate stage finishes on the Cat. 1 Mirador del Sol, which climbs for 7km above the summit of a Cat. 3 climb near the Merlo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHQ-H2CpSt0
Top 10 Finishers
1 Adriano Malori (Ita) Movistar Team 0:22:11 2 Taylor Phinney (USA) BMC Racing Team 0:00:03 3 Jorge Giacinti (Arg) San Luis Somos Todos 0:00:29 4 Lawrence Warbasse (USA) BMC Racing Team 0:00:48 5 Andrey Amador Bakkazakova (CRc) Movistar Team 0:00:52 6 Manuel Quinziato (Ita) BMC Racing Team 0:00:53 7 Tom Boonen (Bel) Omega Pharma – Quick-Step Cycling Team 0:00:57 8 Danilo Hondo (Ger) Trek Factory Racing 0:01:02 9 Eloy Teruel (Spa) Jamis-Hagens Berman 0:01:03 10 Peter Sagan (Svk) Cannondale 0:01:05
General classification after stage 5
1 nairo quintana
2 philip gaimon 0:00:26
3 Sergio Godoy
1/24/2014 San Luis – San Luis 19.2 km
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