The Bahrain Victorious team again took the racing to Ineos Grenadiers at the Tour of the Alps, but the British team responded with another show of force, and Tao Geoghegan Hart again won the stage.
Jack Haig went on the attack on stage 1 and was only caught 800 metres from the finish. On another tough climb up to the stage 2 finish in Ritten, overlooking Bolzano, Santiago Buitrago made an attack 500 metres from the top of the Mittelberg climb, forcing Pavel Sivakov to go deep to protect Geoghegan Hart's leadership and his chances in the sprint.
Only nine riders could hold the pace, with Alexandr Vlasov and Lennard Kamna (Bora-Hansgrohe), and Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) dropped.
Haig tried to move up before the sprint to the line on the sweeping concrete finish on what is an open-air winter ice rink, but Felix Gall (AG2R-Citroën) crashed, and he could only follow Geoghegan Hart around the curve and finish second. Buitrago was third, a few bike lengths behind.
Haig hasn’t won a race since 2020 and has only two victories on his palmares but he was third overall in the 2021 Vuelta a España and is clearly on superb form at the Tour of the Alps and as the Giro d’Italia nears.
“We have to try something,” Haig told Cyclingnews after the sprint, still finding his glass half full.
“Tao is super strong, with a super strong team, but we keep trying,” said Haig. "Time bonuses at the finish line mean he’s got 20 extra seconds on us now, but me and Santiago are going well, so that's a good sign for the Giro d’Italia.”
Buitrago’s attack scored him six points in the mountains classification, and so he pulled on the blue jersey.
“It’s a nice surprise to have this jersey, but we’re here to win,” the Colombian climber said.
“We have three days left, and so for sure, we’ll keep trying. Now we’re looking forward to Wednesday’s stage and the long climb to the finish. We want to do well there."
Geoghegan Hart seemed to search out Haig after the stage, but Haig insisted that they are friends and then explained the dynamic of the crash. Like Geoghegan Hart, Haig wasn’t happy about the contorted finish down and onto the outdoor Ritten ice-skating rink.
“It’s nice to finish here, but maybe it’s a bit dangerous. Fortunately, it all ended okay,” Haig told Cyclingnews.
“I’m good friends with Tao, and I respect him a lot, we just try to do good fair racing, and that’s what happened in the end.
“There was a roundabout with 500m to go, Pavel Sivakov was in front and then Tao, me and Felix Gall were three wide across the road. There was maybe a bit of gravel on the roundabout surface, and so Felix crashed. That messed up things for myself and Tao. That’s what happened.”
