The 2013 Tour de Pologne was the 70th running of the Tour de Pologne cycling stage race. It started on 27 July in Rovereto, Italy – as part of two stages in the country – and ended on 3 August in Kraków, Poland, after seven stages. It was the twentieth race of the 2013 UCI World Tour season.
The race was won by rider Pieter Weening of the Netherlands, after gaining enough time on the final time trial stage to move ahead of the previous race leader Christophe Riblon of the squad. Weening – runner-up to Kim Kirchen in the 2005 edition of the race – had trailed by 27 seconds (in fifth place) going into the stage, but overturned this disadvantage to eventually win the race by 13 seconds over 's Jon Izagirre, who also moved ahead of Riblon on the final stage. Riblon – the winner of the race's queen stage, the second stage, to the Passo Pordoi in Trentino – ultimately completed the podium, three seconds down on Izagirre, and sixteen in arrears of Weening.
The race's other jerseys all went to Polish riders; the points classification went to rider Rafał Majka, who finished as the best-placed Polish rider in fourth place, and led the race for three days due to his consistent finishing in the first half of the race. For the second year in succession, Tomasz Marczyński won the mountains classification for , while Bartosz Huzarski was the winner of the intermediate sprints classification for . The teams classification was comfortably won by , finishing nearly twenty minutes clear of the next best team, .
Schedule + Stage characteristics and winnersStageDateRouteDistanceTypeWinner 1 27 July Rovereto (Italy) to Madonna di Campiglio (Italy) Mountain stage 2 28 July Marilleva–Val di Sole (Italy) to Passo Pordoi–Val di Fassa (Italy) Mountain stage 29 July Rest day 3 30 JulyKraków to Rzeszów Flat stage 4 31 JulyTarnów to Katowice Medium-mountain stage 5 1 AugustNowy Targ to Zakopane Mountain stage 6 2 AugustTerma Bukowina Tatrzańska to Bukowina Tatrzańska Mountain stage 7 3 AugustWieliczka to Kraków Individual time trial
Participating teams As the Tour de Pologne was a UCI World Tour event, all nineteen UCI ProTeams were invited automatically and obligated to send a squad. Along with Team Poland – the Polish national team – three other squads were given wildcard places into the race, and as such, formed the event's 23-team peloton. Each team entered six riders, as part of a pilot project launched by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), thus forming a maximum field of 138 riders, which included 2013 Giro d'Italia winner Vincenzo Nibali, 2012 Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins, and Grand Tour stage winners Ivan Basso, Fabian Cancellara, Michele Scarponi, Rigoberto Urán and Thor Hushovd. The only previous winner in the starting field was 's Johan Vansummeren, who won the race in 2007.
The twenty-three teams that competed in the race were:
Team Poland (national team)
Stages Stage 1 27 July 2013 — Rovereto (Italy) to Madonna di Campiglio (Italy),
For the 70th edition of the Tour de Pologne, race organisers elected to move the first stage outside Poland for the first time in its history, with the race starting in the city of Rovereto in the Trentino region of Italy; it marked the first time that a foreign UCI World Tour race had started in Italy. The first stage was relatively flat for the opening quarter of the stage, before the first climb of the race, the first-category pass at Fai della Paganella in the Dolomites. A long descent towards the midpoint of the stage followed, through Riva del Garda, before the road steadily rose again towards the second categorised climb. The Passo del Durone summited with around remaining, and after a sharp descent, the road kicked up gradually towards the final, first-category climb to Madonna di Campiglio. Although only averaging just over 5%, the -long climb was still expected to cause damage within the field, with a false flat run-in on cobbles in the village itself.
Almost immediately after the start, six riders formed the day's breakaway; the group consisted of rider Valerio Agnoli, 's Bartosz Huzarski, Bartłomiej Matysiak of , Serge Pauwels (), Cédric Pineau of and 's Marco Pinotti. The sextet would ultimately build up a lead which reached a maximum of nine minutes during the early running. The first two categorised climbs would split the break up; Agnoli and Matysiak were dropped on the first, while the Passo del Durone put paid to the chances of Pineau and Pinotti. Pauwels and Huzarski were able to maintain an advantage of approaching two minutes as they hit the final ascent towards Madonna di Campiglio, where Pauwels dropped Huzarski on the lower slopes, before the peloton brought them back. led the peloton up the climb, before the counter-attacks began in earnest.
were attentive on the climb, as two of their riders – Tomasz Marczyński and Rafael Valls – pulling clear of the peloton around halfway up, with Alex Howes of the squad providing assistance. They were brought back shortly after, before 's Pieter Weening launched a solo attack on the peloton. Weening built up a lead of more than half a minute, on a vastly diminished group of riders, which did not include race favourites Vincenzo Nibali () or rider Bradley Wiggins. rider Eros Capecchi and Chris Anker Sørensen of were able to bridge up to Weening – having dropped companion Robert Kišerlovski () in the process – before the top of the climb, although Weening was able to kick again in the closing stages. He was caught inside the final , with the reduced group battling out the stage honours in a sprint for the line; ultimately, it was 's Diego Ulissi who finished strongest, to take the stage victory ahead of 's Darwin Atapuma, and Sørensen's team-mate Rafał Majka, the best placed Polish rider.
Stage 1 Result RiderTeamTime 1 2 s.t. 3 s.t. 4 s.t. 5 s.t. 6 s.t. 7 s.t. 8 s.t. 9 s.t. 10 s.t.General Classification after Stage 1 RiderTeamTime 1 2 + 4" 3 + 6" 4 + 10" 5 + 10" 6 + 10" 7 + 10" 8 + 10" 9 + 10" 10 + 10"
Stage 2 28 July 2013 — Marilleva–Val di Sole (Italy) to Passo Pordoi–Val di Fassa (Italy),
The second of the opening weekend's stages in Italy was regarded as the queen stage of the 2013 Tour de Pologne. On the parcours of , there were three categorised climbs – each one being designated as a first-category ascent – all of which came within the final third of the stage. After an undulating start out of Marilleva in the Val di Sole, the peloton passed through all three of the day's intermediate sprints prior to reaching the foot of the first climb, passing the points in Fondo, Cembra and Cavalese respectively. The first climb was the Passo di Pampeago, which hosted a stage finish of the 2012 Giro d'Italia; after summiting the climb at over , the riders descended towards Ponte Nova, and the bottom of the second climb, the Passo di Costalunga, with ramps of up to 21%. From a steady descent, the road gradually rose towards the Passo Pordoi; a climb averaging 6.8%, but reaching 16% in places. The mountain points were on offer at , but the race continued on for another , finishing at above sea level.
During the early kilometres of the stage, a group – which at one point, topped out at sixteen riders – were able to go clear to form the breakaway of the day. With and pacing the peloton for the leaders overall, Diego Ulissi and Darwin Atapuma, the lead group were able to accumulate a lead of over five minutes at one point during the stage. At the intermediate sprints, 's Bartosz Huzarski was able to extend his lead in the classification, by being first across the line at two of the three points, with a second place at the other. The group split apart on the Passo di Pampeago; after an attack by 's Vincenzo Nibali – having lost nine minutes on the opening stage – the group was reduced to six riders, with it now consisting of Polish riders Tomasz Marczyński () and Maciej Paterski (), Tour de France stage winner Christophe Riblon of , 's Zdeněk Štybar, rider Thomas Rohregger and Georg Preidler of the team. Nibali himself was dropped, and ultimately lost 23' 44" on the stage.
Ulissi got into difficulty on the day's second climb, and was soon shelled out of the back of the main group, as the took over pace-setting as the field moved towards the Passo Pordoi. The Polish contingent of the leaders attacked first on the climb, but Rohregger and Riblon were able to bridge up to them, before Riblon set off on his own up the ascent, with around remaining. Quickly gaining time on his rivals, Riblon – only competing in the race following an injury to Jean-Christophe Péraud at the Tour de France – remained in the saddle all the way up the climb, and would ultimately go on to take his second queen stage success in the space of two weeks, following on from his win at Alpe d'Huez. Rohregger crossed the line second, just over a minute behind with Preidler in third. 's Sergio Henao and Rafał Majka of led the main field home at 1' 35" down, and despite the time bonuses that Riblon and Rohregger received – both for their stage finishes and the "attractivity" standings for the stage – Majka assumed the race lead, by four seconds from Henao, before the race's return to Polish soil, via the rest day.
Stage 2 Result RiderTeamTime 1 2 + 1' 02" 3 + 1' 18" 4 + 1' 35" 5 + 1' 35" 6 + 1' 38" 7 + 1' 40" 8 + 1' 40" 9 + 1' 44" 10 + 1' 44"General Classification after Stage 2 RiderTeamTime 1 2 + 4" 3 + 6" 4 + 7" 5 + 9" 6 + 9" 7 + 13" 8 + 13" 9 + 16" 10 + 18"
Stage 3 30 July 2013 — Kraków to Rzeszów,
The race resumed after the rest day with a stage predominantly suited towards the sprinters that had elected to compete in the race. Starting in Kraków, the parcours of was run entirely between 200 and 400 metres above sea level, with several, short climbs; despite this, there was only one categorised climb throughout the day, a third-category ascent in the village of Lubenia, around before the conclusion of the stage in Rzeszów. A finishing circuit was also utilised in Rzeszów; three laps of a circuit in length were to be completed, to round off the day's running. Weather conditions were also expected to play a factor in the running of the stage, with spells of rain throughout the day.
After several riders hit the tarmac in the opening kilometres due to the expected rain materialising, a four-rider breakaway move was eventually able to be established, with the quartet made up of rider Alexsandr Dyachenko, 's Ricardo Mestre, Mirko Selvaggi (), and Bartłomiej Matysiak, representing the home team. The quartet were able to build up a lead in excess of ten minutes at one point during the stage, before the teams of the sprinters soon stepped up the pace at the front of the peloton. The gap had been halved by the to go mark, and was down to 1' 30", by the time that the leaders reached the finishing circuit in Rzeszów. Matysiak had taken maximum points out on the road, at the two intermediate sprints – coming at Strzyżów and Lubenia respectively – on the course, as well as at the third-category ascent in Lubenia.
Despite the pace that the were setting on the front of the main field, the lead group were managing to resist being caught, with Selvaggi setting the tempo for the leaders as they were circling in Rzeszów. At the start of the final circuit, Dyachenko attacked his companions, with the peloton now inside of half a minute behind the quartet. The catch was made with around remaining of the stage, setting up the sprint finish. led into the final kilometre for Mark Renshaw, but Taylor Phinney moved up the line, to set tempo for team-mate Thor Hushovd; Renshaw was therefore forced to launch his sprint first to get around Hushovd, but Hushovd was able to hit the line first to take his first victory at World Tour level since the 2011 Tour de France. Renshaw was able to get the better of 's Steele Von Hoff for second place, while Rafał Majka was able to maintain his four-second lead in the general classification for .