The Ronde of l´Isard leaves a good taste in the mouth of the Kometa Cycling Team U23 facing June
42nd Ronde de l´Isard
Stage 4: Bélesta – Saint-Girons (154.1 km)
The Ronde de l´Isard, with its mainly mountainous route through mountain passes of the Tour de France, has become, by its own merits, one of the most demanding events on the international calendar in the U23 category. In an edition marked by rain and cold that have left their mark in this area of the Pyrenees during this week, the Kometa Cycling Team completed its best participation as a whole in the French event.
In the last stage the breakaway triumphed. Frenchman Matis Louvel beat his compatriot Simon Guglielmi. After them, separated by small time gaps, another six cyclists arrived. At 1:16, the bunch of the leader and final winner, the Italian Andrea Bagioli (Colpack), ended up crossing the finish line; a group of 42 units where four of the riders of the Alberto Contador Foundation’s U23 formation were riding: Sergio García, Jhon Stiven Ramírez, Carlos García and Edu Pérez-Landaluce. The Cadiz, 17th, was the best classified of the last stage.
In the general classification, in which the Kometa Cycling Team finished in an interesting seventh place among the 21 participating squads, Carlos García from Madrid was the one who finished the highest: 24th, 12:38 from Bagioli. Edu Pérez-Landaluce (28th), Jhon Stiven Ramírez (30th) and Sergio García (37th) finished in the top-40.
Rafa Díaz Justo, director of the Kometa Cycling Team u23: “I can’t highlight any of the six riders, because they’ve all made it out of ten. Today, during the last stage, we had five riders in the main group for many kilometres. We finished with four riders in the top 37, we were seventh by teams… It’s our best result as a team in this race. And this makes us think that everything is going very well for our big objective: the Giro d’Italia. Now we have two races in front of us in which, of course, we are going to try to do very well. But the great race of the year is the Giro. Trying to fill the gap in the continental team is very complicated, but in Italy we want to have a nice race”.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
📸 Ronde de l´Isard
