Here is the situation after 3 days of apathy and hospitalisations in Bulgary:
General time classification
It was only determined by the punchy 2^nd^ stage and a couple of time bonuses.
- Guillermo Silva ๐บ๐พ Astana
- Florian Stork ๐ฉ๐ช Tudor: +4โณ
- Egan Bernal ๐จ๐ด Ineos: '
- Thymen Arensman ๐ณ๐ฑ Ineos: +6โณ
- Julio Ciccone ๐ฎ๐น Lidl-Trek: '
- 29 riders: +10โณ ... and about the same number at 1โฒ
Points classification
- Paul Magnier ๐ซ๐ท Soudal-QS: 105 pts
- Jonathan Milan ๐ฎ๐น Lidl-Trek: 64
- Tobias Andresen ๐ฉ๐ฐ Decathlon: 42
- Madis Mihkels ๐ช๐ช EF: 32
- Diego Sevilla ๐ช๐ธ Polti: 28
Mountain classification
- Diego Sevilla ๐ช๐ธ Polti: 42
- Manuele Tarozzi ๐ฎ๐น Bardiani: 12
- Jonas Vingegaard ๐ฉ๐ฐ Visma: 9
- Mirco Maestri ๐ฎ๐น Polti: 8
- Allessandro Tonelli ๐ฎ๐น Polti: 6
Teams classification
- Astana ๐ฐ๐ฟ
- Tudor๐จ๐ญ '
- Uno-X ๐ณ๐ด '
- Movistar ๐ช๐ธ '
- RB Bora ๐ฉ๐ช '
- EF ๐บ๐ธ '
Stages (TODO: I shall add them progressively)
Stage 4, Tuesday 12
138 km, low difficulty (50 pts), 5 km sprint zone, 3โณ splits
An even shorter course than stage 1, with the same profile as stage 3, but a nastier last mile. A sprint is to be expected again, favouring the sprinters who can handle an uphill finish; even though a breakaway could have its chances in theory, as the line is closer to the climb than it was in stage 3.
Stage 5, Wednesday 13
203 km, medium difficulty (25 pts), 3km sprint zone, 1โณ splits
This stage is made for breakaways or punchers-climbers, but will they take their chance this time?
divulgรขche
Stage 4, Tuesday 12
First change: there was a bit of a fight for breaking away today. We can see that the Italian teams have a real know-how about that: there was no Polti and no Bardiani in the first attempts contrarily to the other days, but in the right one (5+1 men) they put 1 rider each.
Hmm, after that, the second half of the race didn't go as I expected.
Movistar started pushing hard as the main climb started. After 2 miles, all sprinters but C. Strong (๐ฆ๐บ NSN) had been dropped, and he was finally dropped half-way into the climb. The Pink jersey was dropped too, as well as the Blue one; De Lie (๐ง๐ช Lotto), dropped in the first 100 metres of the climb, withdrew. This was all the work of Milesi (๐ฎ๐น Movistar) who pulled for 10 km (and caught all the breakaway โ last surviovors: M. Bais (๐ฎ๐น Polti) and Rafferty (๐ฎ๐ช EF))! Finally, Bernal (๐จ๐ด Ineos) was dropped 2 km from the top, but that wasn't irredeemable.
Nobody went for the Mountain points at the top, so basically all of them were scored by the Movistar riders who were pulling the peloton.
Then Movistar kept on pulling until the finish line.
On the Bonus sprint, Visma tried to have Vingegaard๐ฉ๐ฐ get a few bonus seconds, but he was launched too far and failed scoring any, passed by Christen (๐จ๐ญ UAE), Pellizzari (๐ฎ๐น Bora) and Ciccone (๐ฎ๐น Lidl-Trek).
In the finish, Christen (๐จ๐ญ UAE) tried to leave 1 mile from the line but was caught about 500 m from it. Aular (๐ป๐ช Movistar), the only rider resembling a sprinter, failed to win and reward his team's work, as he started his sprint from too far, and was beaten by Narvaez (๐ช๐จ UAE).
I am not quite sure what the exact goal of Movistar was, to pull so regularly for 60 km... Was all this massive effort only for Aular๐ป๐ช?