Pascal Ackermann takes his second win in two days after taking stage two of Tirreno-Adriatico 2020 taking it up early once again and winning by half a wheel ahead of Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates), who had barged his way through to take second place.
Ackermann (Bora-Hansgrohe) lost his lead-out man, Rüdiger Selig, in the closing stages of the stage but managed to surf the wheels and decided to hit out with about 250 metres to go.
It was another messy sprint that was strung out in the last 3km by Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) as he worked for his sprinter, Tim Merlier, who had recovered from his crash the day before.
How it happened
The day started in the same town as stage one's start/finish in Camaiore and travelled over a predominantly flat stage of 201km.
The break was originally made up of five riders including Geoffrey Bouchard (Ag2r La Mondiale), Nicola Bagioli (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec), Umberto Orsini (Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè), Marco Canola (Gazprom-RusVelo), and Edoardo Zardini (Vini Zabù-KTM).
But Bouchard decided it wasn't worth the effort and sat up to rejoin the peloton, Canola later joined him after getting second place on the only mountain points of the day, meaning he moves up to second in that competition, behind Nathan Haas (Cofidis).
The intermediate sprint saw Zardini lose touch and the gap pulled out to 40 seconds for Orsini and Bagioli but they later sat up to allow Zardini back in.
Orsini kicked off with 26km to go after trying to get his breakaway companions to work with him but he decided to kick on after Bagioli and Zardini sat up and quickly caught by the peloton.
Orsini had 21 seconds as he crossed the finish line for the first time as he went into the 22km finishing lap with Bora-Hansgrohe, CCC Team and Cofidis working to pull him back.
The Bardiani rider finally sat up and dropped back into the peloton with 15km to go as the peloton started to prepare their sprint trains along with the general classification teams trying to keep their leaders safe.
It was a very messy and fast approach yet again with several sprinters trying to take glory, but the German star, Ackermann, powered through and took the stage once again.
Results
Tirreno-Adriatico 2020, stage two: Camaiore to Follonica (201km)
1. Pascal Ackermann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe, in 5-01-53
2. Fernando Gaviria (Col) UAE Team Emirates
3. Rick Zabel (Ger) Israel Start-Up Nation
4. Davide Ballerini (Ita) Deceuninck - Quick-Step
5. Tim Merlier (Bel) Alpecin-Fenix
6. Davide Cimolai (Ita) Israel Start-Up Nation
7. Lorrenzo Manzin (Fra) Total Direct Energie
8. Luca Pacioni (Ita) Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec
9. Florian Vermeersch (Bel) Lotto-Soudal
10. Mike Teunissen (Ned) Jumbo-Visma, all at same time
General classification after stage two
1. Pascal Ackermann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe, in 7-59-28
2. Fernando Gaviria (Col) UAE Team Emirates, at 8s
3. Magnus Cort (Den) EF Pro Cycling, at 16s
4. Rick Zabel (Ger) Israel Start-Up Nation, at same time
5. Nicola Bagioli (Ita) Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec, at 17s
6. Paul Martens (Ger) Jumbo-Visma, at the same time
7. Simon Pellaud (Sui) Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec, at 18s
8. Michael Matthews (Aus) Team Sunweb, at 19s
9. Davide Cimolai (Ita) Israel Start-Up Nation, at 20s
10. Lorrenzo Manzin (Fra) Total Direct Energie, at same time
Hi, I'm one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter. Proud Yorkshireman from the UK's answer to Flanders, Calderdale, go check out the cobbled climbs!
I started watching cycling back in 2010, before all the hype around London 2012 and Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France. In fact, it was Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck's battle in the fog up the Tourmalet on stage 17 of the Tour de France.
It took me a few more years to get into the journalism side of things, but I had a good idea I wanted to get into cycling journalism by the end of year nine at school and started doing voluntary work soon after. This got me a chance to go to the London Six Days, Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain to name a few before eventually joining Eurosport's online team while I was at uni, where I studied journalism. Eurosport gave me the opportunity to work at the world championships in Harrogate back in the awful weather.
After various bar jobs, I managed to get my way into Cycling Weekly in late February of 2020 where I mostly write about racing and everything around that as it's what I specialise in but don't be surprised to see my name on other news stories.
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