“Bandit” stole away on the Höss

Exactly at the red devil’s rag, which marked the last kilometer at the top of the mountain to the Hutterer Höss in Hinterstoder, Luca Vergallito made the irresistible attack on Sunday. The 1.90 meter tall Italian from the Alpecin team said “Ciao” to his four remaining opponents, including Wels captain Riccardo Zoidl, and drove to stage and overall victory in the 13th Tour of Upper Austria. In the end, it was just a measly second that separated him from second-placed Oscar Cabedo Carda (Team Vorarlberg) after a total driving time of 12:08:11 hours and four days of racing.

“Il bandito”, the bandit, is what his cycling friends call the 25-year-old because he regularly steals their best times on Strava segments in the area around Milan. The sports student, like last year’s winner of the race, the former rower Rainer Kepplinger, is a late entrant to competitive cycling. Last year he won the Zwift Academy, which is run online on the roller trainer, from among 160,000 international participants. Which earned him a contract in the youth department of the World Tour team Alpecin, for which the Upper Austrians Michael Gogl and Tobias Bayer also drive.

The lanky Italian puts a lot of watts on the pedals, and he proved that again yesterday on the 9.9-kilometer final climb, to the delight of the many cyclists who tuned in from afar via the live stream offered by the organizer. Right from the start, a tough elimination race developed there, because Wels, on the hunt for the first win of the season, did the preparatory work for Zoidl, first under the pace dictates of Matthias Reutimann and later with Michael Kukrle.

The 2013 winner then took the lead with six kilometers to go. Which was to take revenge later. “Unfortunately, I ran out of gas at the top. But I’m satisfied, I left everything on the road,” said the 35-year-old, who finished fifth at the finish at 1406 meters, 13 seconds behind the stage winner from his proud daughter Anna was received.

Shortly before, he had to let Martin Messner (WSA Graz), who had been glued to his rear wheel for a long time, go in the finish, making him the third best Austrian of this year’s tour. Carda, on the other hand, who had already climbed with the best at the Vuelta a Espana, struggled with the narrow decision against him. “I didn’t have luck on my side.”

For others it was far worse. After Kepplinger’s coup last year, the Steyrer Hrinkow team started this year with great expectations. But Jonas Rapp could not keep up early on the Höss, Jaka Primozic, who fell through no fault of his own on Saturday, also had to bury his ambitions soon.

Alpecin team cleared

The foreign guests, above all the Belgian Alpecin team with three stage wins by Vergallito and twice Timo Kielich, left their mark on the event. “They went pretty deep,” said OC boss Paul Resch, who received praise for the event from many quarters and already had a laugh on his side on Friday when he jumped into the thermal baths in full gear at the finish in Geinberg.

The opening stage of the Dauphine Tour, one of the important dress rehearsals for the Tour de France, went to Christophe Laporte (Jumbo) on Sunday.