Victor Langellotti takes stunning stage win and leader’s jersey at the Tour de Pologne

Victor Langellotti took a brilliantly timed win to take the overall lead of the Tour de Pologne on Saturday.

The Ineos Grenadiers rider was part of a group of 15 men which emerged from the day’s final climb and onto the uphill finish. Brandon McNulty had seemed certain to take the win, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider attacking with around 500m to go, but Langellotti sprinted clear of the group, passing the American with just a few metres to go. 

McNulty finished second, with Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) in third.

Langellotti is 10 seconds ahead of McNulty with only Sunday’s 12.5km individual time trial to go, and the American is by far and away the more accomplished against the clock.

The race kicked off on the final ascent of the Bukovina wall and its 20% gradients, the last of three ascents, topping out just over 11km from the line where a 15-man group emerged.

That group traded blows on the run into the last five, uphill kilometres, with UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Bahrain Victorious chief among the protagonists, though there were also moves from Rudy Molard (Groupama-FDJ) and Quinten Hermans (Alpecin-Deceuninck).

Polish road champion Rafał Majka (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) led the way into the final 2km until his teammate Jan Christen attacked, setting up McNulty’s final attack, but the Emirati squad had reckoned without Langellotti’s incredible finishing kick.

Billed as the queen stage of the Tour de Pologne, day six between Bukowina Resort and Bukowina Tatrzańska tackled 3,039m of climbing over its 147.5km. Starting in the valley, the course took the riders on three laps of a hilly 48km loop before the final 5km climb to the line.

That climb averaged only 5%, though the steepest slopes came early on and the road flattened out with more than 2,000m of false flat and a steeper final. It’s not the first stage with a similar uphill finish, all the others ending with large groups, so organisers will have hoped the two climbs on the circuit would split the peloton.

Both those climbs, the walls of Bukovina and Harnaś climbs, were short, but they both had maximum gradients well over 10%, the former including ramps double that, making it a tough day out even for the punchy sprinters.

The race was onto the Harnaś climb from the flag, a group of eight firing over the top, though they were caught by an already reduced peloton, only Timo Kielich (Alpecin-Deceuninck) staying away. The Belgian was hoping to secure the mountains classification, so was desperately hoping he would eventually become part of a larger break.

In the end, after 15km of full-on, frantic racing, Kielich was joined by eight others, including stage winners Paul Magnier (Soudal-Quickstep), Olav Kooij and Matthew Brennan, the latter two from Visma | Lease a Bike. The best-placed breakaway rider on GC was Chris Hamilton, the Picnic-PostNL rider starting the day only 32 seconds behind yellow jersey Paul Lapeira (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale).

However, while they managed to build a lead of more than a minute, EF Education-EasyPost were unhappy, and on the approach to the Bukovina climb, they sent two riders across the gap. When Marijn van den Berg and Colby Simmons finally got across the race relaxed and the gap began to climb again.

The first ascent of the Bukovina wall saw two of the leading group drop, though by now the lead was around 1:30 as the leaders edged into the final 100km. That advantage grew to 1:40 when they reached the bottom of the Bukovina climb on the next lap, but was never allowed to grow any more.

The gap finally began to drop inside the final 50km, just as they began the last lap. With the peloton closing in fast and the last ascent of Harnaś wall looming, Simmons attacked the break. The Americans' move was for nought, though, Bahrain Victorious leading the pack as he was swallowed up, with more attacks coming over the top of the climb. 

Over the top, the peloton swelled to around 50 riders. UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Bahrain were both showing clear ambition and continued the work in the run into the last ascent of the brutal Bukovina wall, where Lapeira was finally dropped.

On the steepest slopes, the two teams continued to trade punches, though none were knockout blows, and the group of 15 who were to fight for the win emerged towards the top of the climb together. 

In the finale, McNulty made his early move before Langelotti launched his effort, catching and passing the American to take the win.