Team Sky riders remained well-positioned in the overall battle at the Tour Colombia 2.1 after stage 2 on Wednesday, with two more relatively flat stages on Thursday and Friday before the GC battle begins in earnest on stages 5 and 6 across the weekend. Chris Froome, Egan Bernal and Ivan Sosa are all 12 seconds back after finishing third in the opening team time trial on Tuesday and finishing with the bunch, with Wednesday`s sprint finish to stage 2 taken by Deceuninck-QuickStep`s Alvaro Hodeg. With a team of climbers waiting for the mountains at the end of the week, Team Sky`s leaders will spend the next two stages staying safe in the bunch and keeping their powder dry for the big efforts to come.ADVERTISEMENT `We`ve got Egan, and Ivan Sosa as well, so we just need to use the other teams a bit, hide as much as possible and save energy,` Team Sky assistant director Oliver Cookson told Cyclingnews before the start of stage 2. `Medellin was incredibly special with all the people, but it`s nice to be a bit higher up now, where the air`s a bit fresher, shall we say.` Although the final day of the Tour Colombia 2.1 finishes with the 15.5km final climb up Alto las Palmas, the stage 5 circuit outside of La Union starts and finishes at 2,476m above sea level. The peloton will ride from the city of La Union to the circuit near La Ceja, where the riders will do four circuits before heading back to La Union for the finish. It`s a tenaciously lumpy circuit at altitude, and it could easily blow the overall classification apart.
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