Medellín went bonkers on the mini-stage over the Alto de Minas. First, they set off with Cristhian Montoya in solo attack ahead of the bunch which was being paced by Medellín for leader José Tito Hernández. Then Robinson Chalapud set off in pursuit and caught his teammate, leaving the team with the yellow jersey with a Saunier Duval-esque break off the front. Wilson Cardona tried to push from the group of around 15 that was left behind, but he wasn't given any quarter by the remaining contenders, and instead some other counter attacks developed. Approaching the summit, Montoya proved stronger than his more experienced teammate and went solo again as they approached the summit, and went over the summit with about 27" advantage over Chalapud and the Grupo del Líder, which was led by Roosbelth Rojas. Chalapud then rejoined Montoya on the descent, but we got to see very little of it due to some issues of ad placement on such a short stage over a legendary climb, meaning almost three consecutive advert breaks - when we returned with 4km remaining, Montoya had disappeared and Chalapud was chasing Adrián Bustamante of the UAE Team Colombia who had attacked the yellow jersey group, caught the Medellín duo, and attacked them on the way into Caldas - the maillot líder had been slowing things to a crawl with two teammates up the road, and the advantage of Bustamante and Chalapud (who again caught up to the head of the race) suddenly swoll to over a minute; Chalapud paid for his efforts, however, and Bustamante, 14 years his junior, comfortably outsprinted him; Sevilla won the sprint of the group of 13 almost exactly a minute behind.
This set up a final day around the outlying towns and cities of the extended Medellín conurbation, with a misleading profile that belied the many cat.3 and uncategorised ascents in the late going. A 10-man group went up the road (including Salvador Moreno and Cristhian Montoya, most notably) and settled all of the intermediates, but was brought back, so Julián Cardona of the Colnago-CM team (which won the Riosucio stage with Javi Jamaica) went solo, only to be caught with just under 30km remaining when the last sequence of cat.3 climbs began. Those ones that looked like nothing on the profile, just some GPMs noted on a little downward roll. Some real candidates for the Worst of Race Profiles thread here. Montoya, yet again, was in the group that captured Cardona, along with Yecid Sierra, Diego Cano, Eli Saúl Burgos and Germán Gómez of UAE, and then a second group of five, driven by Moreno and Castiblanco, reunited the majority of the original break of the day. Castiblanco, Moreno, Gómez and Cano then broke away from that group, with Montoya and Gómez proving strongest, on the penultimate ascent of the day, before Montoya decided that after his solo exploit yesterday failed, then the one today should surely succeed. He quickly turned the race into what seemed to be a one-on-one time trial; his 31-year-old frame had a bit more durability than his 19-year-old adversary and the teenage Gómez took a few too many risks trying to catch Montoya on the final descent leading to a crash which resulted in his losing far too much time to have any chance of catching Montoya, so the latter led solo up the uncategorised cobbled climb into the finish in Concepción. From the GC group, Medellín carefully monitored to prevent any major attacks, allowing the finale to be settled by an uphill sprint on the cobbled climb which, for good measure, champion elect José Tito Hernández won in order to underscore his GC victory.
Final GC therefore looks like this:
1 José Tito Hernández Jaramillo (1994) Team Medellín 21:39:37
2 Óscar Sevilla Rivera (1976) Team Medellín +21
3 Didier Merchán Cardona (1999) Colombia Tierra de Atletas-GW +28
4 Rafael Steven Pineda Pineda (1999) UAE Team Colombia +1'02
5 Adrián Camilo Bustamante Ruda (1998) UAE Team Colombia +1'18
6 Fabio Andrés Duarte Arevalo (1986) Team Medellín +1'24
7 Brayan Stíven Sánchez Vergara (1994) Team Medellín +1'44
8 Didier Chaparro López (1987) IDEA-Indeportes Antioquia-Lotería de Medellín (Orgullo Paísa) +2'36
9 Javier Ernesto Jamaica Mejía (1996) Colnago CM Team +3'27
10 Juan Tito Rendón Franco (2000) UAE Team Colombia +3'51