A big crash truncates Momparler’s plan; possible collarbone fracture for Haimar Etxeberria

A crash at the final stretch of the Tous Dam, on the penultimate lap of the circuit and around kilometre 103 of the race, cut short the EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team’s plan for the Pascual Momparler Memorial in its return to the calendar. A pile-up involving several riders and Haimar Etxeberria and Fran Muñoz ended with Etxebe in hospital, with a possible broken collarbone in what was his return to competition, and Muñoz, formidably rejoined to the main group by Ramón Fernández, weakened for the final lap.

A fall that came to dissipate the great work done previously, in a phase of the race in which the U23 structure had gone on to harden the race with a view to later movements. But man proposes and god disposes, as the popular saying goes. That’s racing. That’s competition.

The climb to Sumacarcer, fundamental point of hardness in the circuit to which it was necessary to complete up to five laps, brought the selection with the passage of the kilometres and was always scene of starts and tension, but finally the race was not selected so much and the victory was played to the sprint a peloton of about seventy units with triumph for the Russian of the Controlpack Illia Shchegolkov, with Fran Muñoz 16th. Asturian Pablo Uría was one of the men who moved on the ramps in the early stages. Aragon’s Raúl López, on the final podium as the winner of the secondary classification of the ‘metas volantes’, did his best for his team-mates.