CRO Race 2024 Stage 2

October 2, 2024 The wind was howling off of the Adriatic Sea but the start of the 114KM stage was calm. 5 riders got off the front to make up the early break but they were caught and it all kicked off again with 68.5KM to go on the first categorized climb of Jovici. Ineos were aggressive and eventually got Kim Heiduk clear with Paweł Bernas of Mazowsze Serce Polski and Daniel Turek of ATT Investments. Jelle Johannink of TDT-Unibet and Axel van der Tuuk of Metec-SOLARWATT bridged up to make a new break. Their lead was narrow at just 15 seconds with 56KM to go. Polti Kometa did the work to bring them back and everything was reset once again with 53KM to go. Jakub Kaczmarek of Mazowsze Serce Polski and Casper van der Woude of Metec-SOLARWATT were next to attack and got up to 1 minute. They had just half of that at 25KM to go when they went over the final categorized climb of the day and were caught halfway down the descent. A few other attacks were attempted but Bahrain-Victorious and DSM-Firmenich had a bunch sprint as their top priority. DSM-Firmenich led through 5KM to go with Bahrain-Victorious taking over and looking very strong with 1KM to go. Both teams got swept away as Polti Kometa hit out for their sprinter Giovanni Lonardi with 400M to go. It was all across the road at 50M from the line but Juan Sebastián Molano of UAE emerged from the rest to take the win. Lonardi had to settle for second as Sam Welsford of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe got boxed in on the barriers and had to free-wheel to third place.