22-year-old Junior Lecerf has taken a second victory in as many days for Soudal-QuickStep in the Czech Tour, cleverly profiting from all the hard work by Cian Uijtdebroeks (Visma-Lease a Bike) on the final category 1 climb of Dlouhé Straně to snatch a summit finish victory from his fellow Belgian.
In a lead group of three, Uijtdebroeks started the sprint close to 300 metres to go, but Lecerf, having followed the Visma racer's wheel all the way up the Dlouhé Stráně as he shredded the field, was instantly able to counter.
Lecerf then maintained his ferocious uphill pace on the last part of the climb, crossing the line ahead of Alessandro Fancellu (Team UTKO) and a fading Uijtdebroeks.
Thanks to his victory, the young Soudal-QuickStep racer also inherited the leader's jersey from teammate Luke Lamperti, with a six second advantage on Fancellu and nine on Uijtdebroeks.
"This feels amazing," Lecerf said, "I worked hard for this and to be rewarded - it's perfect. The team did a great job controlling things, so many thanks to them."
"It was ok on Cian's wheel, our tactic was to just follow today and trust in the sprint and it worked out so I'm really happy."
"I knew the climb from 2021 and 2022 from the Peace Race, so that helped. It meant I timed my sprint well, I didn't hesitate and I took the victory. And tomorrow [a flat stage] we can go for the win again with Luke."
On the lengthy rolling opening segment of the stage, an eight-rider early break never gained more than an advantage of just over five minutes, and the final survivor, Kyrylo Tsarenko (Solution Tech-Vini Fantini), was reeled in by the Visma-Lease a Bike-led peloton with more than half of the Dlouhé Stráně to go.
Overnight leader Lamperti had already fallen back in the opening kilometres of the one major classified climb of the day, and the blistering pace set by Visma then split the peloton completely, leaving seven riders ahead. Three of them were from the Dutch WorldTour squad, with recent Tour de l'Ain winner Uijtdebroeks opening up the late charges. However, young Colombian Santiago Umba (XDS Astana Devo') made an impressive counterattack, forcing Uijtdebroeks to return to the fray.
The Belgian's display of power proved a two-edged weapon, as another relatively unknown rider, Alessandro Fancellu from the Continental UTKO team, opened up a gap and once again made the Visma rider work hard on the front of the five-strong lead group, with everyone else content to sit back and let him get on with it. But although Uijtdebroeks' efforts subsequently reduced the group from five to three, he was seemingly finding it impossible to drop Lecerf, nor - even more surprisingly - Fancellu.
Uijtdebroeks was looking more and more like a victim of his own strength, and when Lecerf delivered his blistering long uphill acceleration, he was unable to respond. Fancellu, meanwhile, was able to stay in touch with the two WorldTour riders and, having taken second, remains another possible challenger for overall victory.
The sprinters will likely get back into the thick of the action on Saturday's stage 3, a much flatter run from 148.4 kilometre run from Prostejov to Ostrava, prior to Sunday's showdown second summit finish, the shorter but much punchier Pustevny climb.
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