CYCLING – Team Bahrain Victorious’ Santiago Buitrago held on to the King of the Mountains (KOM) jersey yesterday as the third and final week of the 81st La Vuelta a Espana got underway in Spain.
Paul Miquel was the best finisher for the kingdom’s squad in yesterday’s 181.1-kilometre 16th stage.
The Spaniard was part of a bunch sprint to the finish, spearheaded by winner Matthew Brennan, who completed the leg in three hours 56 minutes and 33 seconds.
Miquel and Slovenian Matevz Govekar were not far behind, with Govekar taking 18th place.
Amongst the rest of the Bahrain Victorious crew, Pello Bilbao, also from Spain, was 36th, Hungarian Attila Valter came 42nd, Dutchman Mathijs Paasschens was 55th, Slovenians Roman Ermakov and Jakob
Omrzel followed in 57th and 67th, respectively, while Buitrago, from Colombia, came 101st.
Buitrago stayed in first place on the KOM rankings for the blue-and-white polkadot overalls with 69 points – still 29 ahead of Wout van Aert of Team Visma-Lease a Bike, his closest challenger.
Omrzel stayed Bahrain Victorious’ best rider in the general classification in sixth, six minutes and 14 seconds behind overall race leader Enric Mas of Movistar Team, while he also remained second in the bestyoung rider classification – 30 seconds behind Oscar Onley of Netcompany Ineos.
This year’s 21-stage La Vuelta a Espana continues today with stage 17, set to cover 185km from the elite men’s road race’s total distance of 3,296.6km.
The event follows the other two grand tours of this international cycling season, which were the Giro d’Italia in May and the Tour de France in July.