Neutralisation chaos unsettles Pithie and Red Bull, Rajović wins Tour of Slovenia stage 2

Dusan Rajovic won the second stage of the Tour of Slovenia. The Serbian rider from Solution Tech NIPPO Rali was by far the fastest in a bunch sprint, beating stage 1 winner Laurence Pithie of Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. It all happened after the race was halted for nearly half an hour following a major crash.

The Tour of Slovenia kicked off with a sprinter’s stage on Wednesday, though Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe had other plans. They made sure all their competitors were dropped, after which Laurence Pithie and Arne Marit pulled off a spectacular one-two finish. There would be more opportunities for them on Thursday as well, in a stage that included a brief detour into Croatia.

A breakaway group full of local teams and riders made for an exciting day, but there were no big names among them. The sprinter teams were therefore able to take it easy early in the day. As the race progressed, the pace picked up a bit. The three-minute lead gradually shrank, and with forty kilometers to go, they were caught.

It was the riders from Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe who set the pace. They sent in climber Giulio Pellizzari to put some of the sprinters under pressure again, which meant the peloton thinned out considerably once more. It also caused some nervousness, which in turn led to a serious crash. The medical staff had their hands full, so with less than thirty kilometers to go, they decided to take drastic measures.

The organisers initially implemented a rolling neutralisation, but later decided to bring the peloton to a complete stop. That took longer than hoped, partly because the peloton had regrouped as a result of the neutralisation. The organiers hoped to restore the situation to what it was before the stop. They succeeded, and so the race could be restarted.

With 27 kilometers to go, we essentially found ourselves on a new course after about twenty minutes of standing still. And Red Bull continued what it had been doing before: working hard at the front to thin out the pack. Still, most of the sprinters managed to stay with the group in the somewhat hilly final stretch. So the German team would have to contend with more competition in the final sprint.

Still, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe had the strongest lead-out. The question was: who would get to finish it off for them? Just like in Stage 1, we saw that Pithie was the one to finish it off. The general classification leader received a superb lead-out from rival Ben Oliver (Modern Adventure), but he was soundly beaten by Dusan Rajovic (Solution Tech NIPPO Rali).