Visma | Lease a Bike dominate Tour de Pologne queen stage as Louis Barré takes first pro win

Louis Barré (Visma | Lease a Bike) won the queen stage on day six of the Tour de Pologne. The Frenchman made perfect use of his team’s numerical advantage to claim the first professional victory of his career, although the day was not quite perfect for Visma: Bart Lemmen lost the overall race lead to Christian Scaroni of XDS-Astana.

The Tour of Poland has been an interesting race so far, with stage victories for Jonathan Milan and, in particular, Bart Lemmen. The Dutchman from Visma | Lease a Bike won stage 4 and immediately moved into the overall lead, which he successfully defended on Friday. That made it clear what was at stake for him in Saturday’s queen stage.

The route took the peloton around Bukovina Resort, with several climbs along the way. That did not deter a strong group of riders, who went on the attack from the very beginning.

The names? Walter Calzoni (Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team), Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ United), Samuel Watson, Magnus Sheffield (Netcompany INEOS), Luca Vergallito (Alpecin-Premier Tech), Alessandro Borgo (Bahrain Victorious), Steff Cras (Soudal Quick-Step) and Henri-François Renard-Haquin (Team Picnic PostNL).

Visma | Lease a Bike set the pace in the peloton before switching to an aggressive strategy when other teams began attacking. Barré, who had finished third on Friday, followed up a counterattack from teammate Wilco Kelderman and managed to latch onto a move from Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) in the run-in to the finale.

Barré proved strong enough to drop his Colombian companion, putting Visma | Lease a Bike in the perfect position tactically. Lemmen, meanwhile, could control the chasing group together with Kelderman, which made the pursuit increasingly stop-start. Naturally, that worked in favour of the race leader in yellow and black, although Lemmen still had the final uphill kilometres to negotiate.

XDS-Astana were the only team willing to sacrifice riders in the chase, allowing Barré’s advantage to increase to 40 seconds. The peloton managed to claw back several seconds in the final kilometre, but Barré’s stage victory was no longer in danger. Scaroni, however, moved into the overall race lead thanks to his second-place finish.

The Tour de Pologne will be decided on Sunday with a 12-kilometre individual time trial.

1. Louis Barré (Visma | Lease a Bike)
2. Christian Scaroni (XDS-Astana) + 0.10
3. Marco Brenner (Tudor) ''