Alejandro Ropero adds 85 points in the fight for the Copa de España by finishing third in the Momparler
VII Memorial Momparler
Villanueva de Castellón-Villanueva de Castellón (163 km)
In a strange end, with final resolution by the judges, Alejandro Ropero from Granada finished third in the Memorial Pascual Momparler 2019, an edition in which the Catalan of Lizarte Roger Adriá won to ascend to the leadership of the Spanish Cup. The rider of the Kometa Cycling Team, in his second third place in the competition after the one harvested in the Guerrita Trophy, takes new vigour in the classification for the last races.
Resolution by the judges in the sense that Ropero had initially been fourth. His teammate Carlos García had managed to finish in second place, but was later postponed until the last place of the leading group of eighteen units. The Spaniard was one of the riders who took to the left a roundabout located about two kilometers from the end, a circumstance that gave them a slight advantage at the head of the race. The judges ordered them to stop just as García was starting and taking a few meters, although he was overtaken by Adria just before the finish line
What is certain is that the seventh edition of the Memorial Momparler, with its demanding course and the very high level of concurrence, was a great battle in which the whole block of the Kometa Cycling Team was one of its main actors. Alessandro Fancellu, Alejandro Regueiro, Sergio García, and Edu Pérez-Landaluce were involved in many of the different cutting attempts that took place. Finally Regueiro and García managed to catch a leak of thirteen units that would grow until 26, also with Fancellu present, completed 50 kilometers of race. “I felt very good, I like hard races like this and I had very good sensations”, explains the Italian.
In the hard climb to El Campello, where the leader of the Francisco Galván Cup would suffer until today within the main squad, the race leader lost members, but Sergio García and Fancellu stayed in it. A very dangerous quintet formed in the terrain after the ascent of Cumbres de Valencia motivated the concentration of all the riders of the Kometa in the chasing group to carry out hunting work and also to keep Galván away. Both objectives were met and gave way to a final part of the race in which the climb to the hermitage of Santa Ana again provided several movements and a new selection of the avant-garde, reduced to eighteen unified runners in the last five kilometers despite the efforts of Joel Nicolau and Eusebio Pascual (Caja Rural).
“The end was a little crazy. With two kilometres to go there was a roundabout where some riders took it to the left and others to the right, following the bike, myself included. Those riders have taken us about 200 meters or so. I was blocking the gap until I saw that Carlos was ahead, when I stopped pulling. Facing the finish line I threw myself, I passed many. I came back, like a howitzer, I lacked road to specify something else. But today I’ll certainly keep the great performance of the team. From the first to the last we have made a run. We’ve had people on the run, we’ve paddled to leave the leader behind and not to connect again… We’ve been very high at all times, working as a team. All the team-mates have been out of ten,” explains Alejandro Ropero. “Now we are in the toughest tests, they are the ones we have to be ahead of. Personally I hope to continue like this, to continue climbing in the general classification and to be able to give some happiness. Now it’s time to think about Torredonjimeno, take care of yourself and rest”.
Rafa Diaz Justo, director of the Kometa Cycling Team U23: “We came to Momparler to make a beautiful race, that was our intention and more or less everything went as we wanted. I wanted to get a head start in front, work from behind and try to eliminate the leader. In fact, there was a moment when we had three riders in front and three behind us and we stopped people to work”.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
📸 Vincent Bravo
