Paris-Nice Stage 6: Luis Leon Sanchez beats Jens Voigt to stage win, Wiggins keeps lead

Still in yellow and looking good to keep it.
QUOTE:

Luis Leon Sanchez of Rabobank and RadioShack-Nissan's Jens Voigt fought out
a two-man battle to win Stage 6 of Paris-Nice in Sisteron this afternoon,
the Spaniard just having enough left in the tank to pass the hugely popular
German on the line. Some 14 seconds behind, Garmin-Barracuda's Heinrich
Haussler took the sprint for third, meaning that none of the leading
contenders managed to pick up bonus seconds to close the gap on race leader
Bradley WIggins.

As Sanchez and Voigt entered the final five kilometres, the gap back to the
main bunch was down to just one minute. Omega Pharma-Quick Step were driving
the pace at the front, working for third-placed Levi Leipheimer who was
looking to pick up the four second time bonus for finishing third on the
stage to put him on the same time as yesterday's stage winner, Lieuwe Westra
of Vacansoleil-DCM.

The gap on the leading pair tumbled as the stage headed towards its
conclusion, but it was clear they would be the riders contesting the finish
as they headed under the flamme rouge and into the final kilometre.

Voigt, sixth overall in this race during each of the past two seasons and
Sanchez, the overall winner of Paris-Nice in 2009 and second behind Omega
Pharma-Quick Step's Tony Martin last year, had been part of a 26-man
breakaway group that had got away early on in today's 178.5 kilometre stage
from Suze-la-Rousse which included race leader Wiggins and second-placed
Westra.

Riders with hopes of the overall win including Movistar's Alejandro
Valverde, fourth overall, found themselves briefly in a third group on the
road, but the main bunch came back together, leaving seven riders out in
front.

With a little over 10 kilometres to go, Sanchez and Voigt dropped the one
rider who had managed to stay with them, AG2R's Mickael Cherel, setting up a
duel for the stage win between two of the peloton's stronger men.

http://road.cc/content/news/54411-pa...-wiggins-keeps

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Simon Mason