After winning the 6.8km individual time trial in Angers by the smallest margin (less than one second), Anton Vorobyev of Katusha went for a long solo effort to make it two in a row at the end of the queen stage of the Circuit Sarthe-Pays de la Loire atop the Mont des Avaloirs. FDJ young sensation Marc Fournier courageously retained his yellow jersey after losing contact with the peloton 25km before the finish.
“Initially I didn’t plan to go in the break, I wanted to help Matvey Mamykin to try for himself," Vorobyev explained. “But I happened to catch a small group and I decided to continue. I want to say a big thank to [directeur sportif] Dmitry Konyshev, who helped me a lot, saying where to work more, where to recover a bit. His help was crucial today. The last kilometers were really hard, but I did my best to keep the gap and to win it. I am really happy, I feel like it is the way to continue.”
Vorobyev was a member of the four-man breakaway that took off after 5km of racing, along with Patrick Gretsch (AG2R-La Mondiale), Benoît Jarrier (Fortuneo-Vital Concept) and Nicolas Baldo (Roth). They got a maximum lead of 6.05 at kilometre 80.
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The Russian time triallist wasn’t happy with the speed of his companions as their initiative looked like going nowhere, so he rode away by himself even though there were 50km remaining on the difficult circuit including the 4-km ascent to the Mont des Avaloirs, which is the highest peak of western France 417 metres above sea level.
“When we passed the line the first time I checked it and found a right place to attack, so the second time I knew exactly where to go”, Vorobyev described. “Anton decided to go solo and it was the right decision," Konyshev echoed. “He is in a good form, alone he could hold a really good speed. It was a very strong and smart race from Anton, I am very happy for him.”
Having finished stage 1 with a deficit of more than seven minutes, Vorobyev wasn’t a threat to the yellow jersey but another race started in the hills near Pré-en-Pail in the last hour of racing. Sondre Holst Enger fired it up for IAM Cycling with an attack 30km before the finish. With 25km to go, Fournier couldn’t hold the pace of the main group led by Thomas Voeckler and his very powerful Direct Energie team. “But we didn’t have the capacity to put the bunch into pieces," Voeckler acknowledged. “Fournier is a solid rider. He fought really well.”
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