CYCLING – Team Bahrain Victorious star Santiago Buitrago battled hard to hold on to the King of the Mountains (KOM) jersey yesterday in the 20th and penultimate stage of the 81st La Vuelta a Espana in Spain.
Buitrago fended off a hard-charging Wout van Aert of Team Visma-Lease a Bike to keep the blue-and-white polkadot overalls heading into today’s highly anticipated finale.
The Colombian’s lead in the battle for the KOM title was reduced significantly, however. Buitrago remained on 78 points while van Aert scored 22 yesterday to improve to 62 and narrow the gap.
Buitrago was helped in his bid to maintain his KOM standing by a huge effort from Spanish teammate Pau Miquel, who narrowly missed out on the podium yesterday by placing fourth. Miquel finished the 186.8-kilometre leg three minutes behind stage winner Mikel Landa of Soudal Quick-Step, who completed the route in four hours 58 minutes and one second.
Miquel’s Slovenian teammate Jakob Omrzel followed in 20th just over 10 minutes from the victor, while Buitrago was 36th 17 minutes back.
Amongst the other members of the Bahrain Victorious squad, Hungarian Attila Valter was 52nd, Dutchman Mathijs Paasschens came 73rd, Spaniard Pello Bilbao was 84th, and Slovenians Roman Ermakov and Matevz Govekar were 110th and 134th, respectively.
Despite placing in the top 20, Omrzel dropped one spot on the general classification to seventh with one stage remaining. Buitrago remained 17th.
Omrzel also stayed second in the best young rider ranking, where he is a minute and 10 seconds behind Oscar Onley of Netcompany Ineos, while Miquel improved two positions to 14th on the race’s points ranking.
Bahrain Victorious, meanwhile, rose one spot to third on the overall teams’ classification.
This season’s La Vuelta a Espana concludes today after three weeks of action with the 21st and final stage, set to cover 112km of the total 3,209.6km distance.
La Vuelta a Espana is the third and final grand tour of this international cycling season, following the Giro d’Italia in May and the Tour de France in July.
Also for Bahrain Victorious yesterday in Europe, Italian Antonio Tiberi claimed an impressive eighth place yesterday in the Memorial Marco Pantani in Italy.
The one-day elite men’s road race featured a distance of 191.6km, with Tiberi part of a trailing group that finished 23s behind winner Ion Izagirre of Cofidis, who triumphed in 4:23:43.
Tiberi will next be competing in the Trofeo Matteotti today as part of the same seven-rider squad that raced yesterday. His teammates include countrymen Damiano Caruso and Leonardo Consolidani, Hungarian Balint Feldhoffer, Pole Kamil Gradek, Frenchman Lenny Martinez, and Slovenian Matej Mojoric.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh