After Thursday’s short prologue, the Tour of Szeklerland continued with a 150 kilometer stage. The peloton raced from Sfântu Gheorghe to Miercurea Ciuc. The route included two categorized climbs.
After the initial attempts, the breakaway of the day quickly formed and Team United Shipping sprinter Nikiforos Arvanitou was among them. In addition to our Greek rider, two of the best riders of this year’s Tour of Szeklerland, Alan Banaszek, and Dominik Neuman, were also in the breakaway. The bunch had a difficult start to the chase due to the fact that both of the best teams, TUS and ATT, gave riders to the breakaway. And in addition, the peloton’s job was made more difficult by a closed train barrier.
In the last kilometers, ATT, taking advantage of the superiority of its numbers, Banaszek attacked the breakaway. This attempt was essentially brought back by Arvanitou alone, but our sprinter no longer had enough strength to be faster than Neuman.
Dominik Neuman won the stage and took the lead in the general classification. Nikiforos Arvanitou came second again and will also occupy second place in the GC before the final day, he also leads the U23 and points classifications. Erik Fetter remains in the best Hungarian rider’s jersey.
Our Greek sprinter competed actively all day:
“It wasn’t in my plan to go for the breakaway but it just happened. I saw the chance when the ATT riders attacked and I knew I should follow them. We had a small gap and then it was a mindgame until the finish line. I won the last intermediate sprint and I won the last KOM as well. At the end Banaszek made a very strong attack and nobody was able to follow him. I knew that I had to risk everything for the GC aims, so I pushed as hard as I could, Luckily I caught him in the last 300 meters. After this, I immediately started the sprint which I think was a mistake. I should have waited and maybe the other ATT rider couldn’t beat me. He was passing me very slowly but I was on my limit. It was the keypoint. I knew that he would try an attack but he did it earlier than I expected. Tomorrow I think we can win the GC! That’s why I came here and that’s why I race!”
The bunch sprint was won by our other speinter, Mihajlo Stolic:
“Today we had multiple tactics to play, we weren’t just waiting for the sprint. I followed Niki when he attacked, even though I wasn’t in the best position to join them immediately. I saw that they went away quickly, and I didn’t want to pull together the whole bunch. It was right after a climb, most riders were quite tired. One more of us would have been definitely better in the breakaway, especially since ATT had two guys up there. But we made a team decision to slow down the peloton and not do any work, we hoped that Niki would finish the job, and he absolutely delivered. It’s fantastic to have him with us. When I heard he was joining, I was genuinely happy, especially because we’ve been friends since our junior days. Both of us feel more confident knowing we have each other out there, especially for the sprint. We work together and make each other’s job easier.”