A competitive Sunday in memory of Agustín Sagasti

VIII Memorial Agustín Sagasti
Mungia-Mungia (136.8 km)

José Antonio García, Carlos García, Wesley Mol from the Netherlands, Jorge Pastor, John Stiven Ramírez from Colombia, Alejandro Regueiro, Alejandro Ropero and Hugo Sampedro are the eight riders chosen by Rafa Díaz Justo to represent Polartec-Kometa U23 this Sunday at the Gran Premio Mungia, Memorial Agustín Sagasti. A special race both for its tribute and memory and, by another hand, for the victory, a year ago, of the Sevillian Juan Pedro Lopez.

The eighth edition of the Mungiko Sari Nagusia, organised by the Valentín Uriona Cycling Society, will be held over a 34.2 kilometre circuit where the pack will have to complete four laps to total 136.8 kilometres. The four passes through Alto de Mesa, in the municipality of Gatika, are the main orographic difficulty of the route. A fundamental hill in the development of the test.

Agustín Sagasti, whose memory recovers this race, was the cyclist who signed the first victory of the Euskadi Foundation (fist step of Euskaltel-Euskadi) as a professional team. It happened in Itzulia in 1994, in the first sector of a stage that ended up in his village, Mungia. That beautiful story, that of the neoprofessional who succeeds in his home, unfortunately did not have such a happy ending.

Sagasti’s sporting career was nipped in the bud the following season by a serious accident during the last stage of the Vuelta a los Valles Mineros; a high-speed impact on a vehicle that got me into a race that kept him in a coma for four days and caused him significant disabilities. Forced to abandon cycling, and after years of fighting in the courts, Sagasti was found dead at his home in November 2009. He was 39 years old.

(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)

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