A bittersweet Slovenia, between KOMs and crashes
A first stage between bitter and sweet, the one at the Tour of Slovenia. There’s a lot to be happy about, really: with our Andrea Garosio who was great at getting into the breakaway of the day and even better at gaining points in the GPM classification, so much so that tomorrow he will be the one to wear the leader’s jersey of this classification as well as occupying fourth place in the overall ranking. And with a right racing attitude, made of continuous attention and a desire to always attack, made of a desire to show off. And unfortunately there is also some reason to be sorry, with that crash in the final kilometer that hit first Alex Martin and then Fernando Tercero. A few bumps, their conditions will be evaluated by our medical staff in the coming hours.
The stage, from Celje to Rogaška Slatina, was eventually resolved in a sprint that saw the victory of Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco AlUla) who ruled German Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious) and Matteo Moschetti of the Q36.5 Pro Cycling team. The peloton remounted with less than 400 meters to go Fedeli, Tonelli and Ericsson who had hoped for the feat until the end. Our Davide Bais finished in 18th place.
Jesus Hernandez: “Today I am somewhere between happy and angry. Happy because Garosio managed to get into the breakaway, happy because he managed to take the GPM jersey, happy because the team rode really really well: together, focused, determined. Angry because of the crashes of Fernando and Alex, of course. But we have to continue with this mentality.”
Andrea Garosio: “Today I had to try to go in the breakaway with the goal of taking the KOM jersey and after a very fast and twisty start on a climb I managed to take the breakaway away. After that I managed by focusing on KOM, and once I got there I knew through Biagio Conte who informed me over the radio that the last 500m were the easiest so I attacked right away to get there alone and in the second attempt I succeeded. Then we continued to work together in three because one had dropped off until they caught us and I tried to stay with the group in the breakaways even though I was a bit tired because of the a lot of wind we found.”
