Archie Ryan has today gone head-to-head with Isaac del Toro on the big climbing stage in Austria and now looks set for the best general classification result of his career

Archie Ryan (EF Education-EasyPost) has gone head-to-head with Giro d’Italia runner-up Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates XRG) on the queen stage of the Tour of Austria (2.1).

And though Ireland’s Ryan could not prevent his Mexican rival from taking his third stage victory in a row, he dropped the other riders ahead of him overall and now looks set for the best general classification result of his career.

Ryan’s team mate, Esteban Chaves, did his best to stay in contention on the upper slopes of the final climb to aid the Irishman as del Toro had team mate Rafał Majka to call on.

And when the two UAE Team Emirates XRG riders were the only ones left standing with Ryan as the finish approached, the Irish rider were always going to have his work cut out for him to take the stage win.

Majka led the trio towards the finish atop the cat 1 Kühtai climb and kept going on the front until deep into the final kilometre. Though Ryan continued to glance back to check on del Toro, when the Mexican rider kicked for the finish line he was simply far too strong.

He made his move with about 250m to go and immediately pulled out a gap, as Ryan strained and tried to go after him, with Majka immediately losing ground.

On the line, del Toro claimed victory by four seconds from Ryan, with Majka in 3rd place at six seconds. Ryan had started the day in 4th place overall, some 24 seconds down on race leader Felix Großschartner (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

However, the Austrian race leader lost just over three minutes today while 3rd place overall Andrew August (Ineos Grenadiers) lost 1:27. And as del Toro and Ryan gained time on everyone else today, they have moved into the top two positions overall.

Del Toro has the race lead by 29 seconds from Ireland’s Ryan, with Majka now 3rd at 47 seconds. The next man – 4th placed Felix Engelhardt (Team Jayco AlUla) – went on the attack today but was overhauled on the final climb and is now 1:20 down.

Today the riders faced a short and sharp 117km from Innsbruck to Kühtai, with 3,500m of climbing, with most of that in the final. The finish was comprised of two climbs, one after the each, with just a small section of descending in between, meaning most of the last 22km was uphill.

The bunch was whittled down on those ascents, with Ryan, del Toro and Majka proving strongest and now looking very likely to fill the top three places in the final general classification.

While there is 3,600m of climbing to come on the final stage to Feldkirch tomorrow, most of that is the first half of the stage. There are a couple of smaller climbs in the second half of the stage but they are in the 1-2km range.

They will likely thin down the peloton rather than result in major GC splits, though the gradients on those climbs are between 6 and 9 per cent and may be attractive to some of the riders for potentially stage-winning attacks.

Today Darren Rafferty (EF Education-EasyPost) was on team duties and finished in 19th place at 4:06. He now sits 19th overall at 6:38.