Moser denies Henao on the line in Poland

Moser's time bonus takes race lead from Kwiatkowski

Italian Moreno Moser gave Liquigas-Cannondale double success on stage 6 of the Tour of Poland, putting in a perfectly timed attack in the final kilometer to deny Team Sky's Sergio Henao the stage victory just before the line.

Moser's time bonus for the stage win put him in the lead of the general classification, five seconds ahead of Omega Pharma-Quickstep's Michal Kwiatkowski.

At 191km in length and with 15 climbs, ten of them classified for the climber's competition, the sixth stage of the Tour of Poland made up for the lack of absolute altitude with frequency in its ascents, clocking in 4400m of climbing, but never going higher than 1000m above sea level.

Mountains leader Daniel Teklehaimanot (Orica-GreenEdge) took the first points, but surrendered his jersey to the breakaway which left the peloton soon thereafter. Tomasz Marczynski (Vacansoleil-DCM) overtook him in the standings by winning all but the last climb during his foray off the front together with Roman Kreuziger (Astana), Ian Stannard (Sky), Tom Jelte Slagter (Rabobank) and Bartosz Huzarski (Polish National Team).

The advantage of the five riders went up and down as frequently as the elevation, but averaged around four minutes until the final lap, when attacks from the peloton quickly whittled down the lead before the final categorized climb.

Sergio Henao (Sky) hit out on the ascent, catching all of the leaders and going past, pursuied by Przemyslaw Niemiec (Lampre) and Jon Izaguirre Insausti (Euskaltel - Euskadi) with 15km to go.

Niemiec caught and passed Henao on the descent, but quickly faded back as the roller coaster ride headed into another upswing. Stannard, getting a second wind, countered with Moser, but the Italian wasn't keen to go all in quite yet, as there were still two more lumps to go.

Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) and Garmin-Sharp's Christophe Le Mevel tried to have a go, but all were back together soon enough. Henao had another go just before the crest, dropping Izaguirre who had tried to latch onto his wheel, and soloing all the way until the 50m mark when the surge from Moser nullified his move.

Kwiatkowski fought hard to get the third place time bonus behind Henao, but it was not enough to save his yellow jersey.

Now five seconds in arrears, the Polish rider will have to fight for the intermediate bonuses as well as the finish tomorrow.
 

Read more on: cyclingnews.com

Moreno Moser wins stage 6 of the Tour of Poland
Photo: © Tour de Pologne