Burgos and Poland round-up

Day four in Burgos featured yet another hilltop finish, and once again Samu was right in there. The stage 1-victor came home second, beaten to the line by Katusha's super-domestique Daniel Moreno by a single second. Samu led home a small group containing all the GC big-hitters, meaning he wasn't able to claw back any time on the leader. He did advance to fourth though but is still 21 seconds down on Rodríguez with only tomorrow's stage to the Lagunas de Neila left. In that select group was also Orbea's (and soon Euskaltel's) Ricardo García, who grabbed fourth, and Igor Antón. Antón is now eighth overall while García is tenth. Orbea even had Mikel Bizkarra in the break getting them some publicity, so they no doubt had a good day out. Mikel Astarloza showed he's been training well on his own these last couple of years by taking a fine 19th on the stage just 15 seconds back, but Nieve, who'd been going so well up to now, suffered a jour sans and conceded a full 59 seconds and thus dropped to 18th on GC. Oroz came home three seconds further back, Bilbao finished 64th at 1:29, Landa 79th at 3:22 and Isasi 80th at 3:23. Orbea placed Urain in 41st at 1:02, Sáez and Martín in 60th and 63rd place at 1:15, Etxebarria 71st at 2:10, Zabalo in 87th at 3:23, while Bizkarra and Cabedo ended up 110th and 111th both close to five minutes in arrears.

The Tour of Poland came to an end today with a flat 128km ride in and around Kraków. It was a quiet day for the team, the only bad note being Miguel Mínguez's abandonment. Other than that everyone came through okay with Sesma being the only one to cede time on the day (42 seconds to be precise). Jon Izagirre finished up a highly-creditable 17th on GC, while Azanza was 40th, Cazaux 56th and Sesma 75th. Euskaltel ranked 15th as a team.