Carlos García and Edu Pérez-Landaluce, the most outstanding in a cold and rainy mountainous day
42nd Ronde de l´Isard
Stage 2: Salies-du-Salat – Castillon-en-Couserans (136.5 km)
The top of Col de la Core was forty-five kilometers from the finish line, an ideal distance to select the race and offered some margin for unforeseen events or fainting. But on Friday it was rainy and cold and both factors turned his descent, and the whole stage in general, into a little hell from which the Italian of Colpack Andrea Bagioli, the new leader of the general classification after his partial triumph, came out as a great winner. Carlos García from Madrid, 37th at 5:26, was the first classified among the riders of the Kometa Cycling Team.
Fourteen rideres stood out at the head of the race in the stretch between Portet d´Aspet and La Core, the hot spots of the day, and the fourteen reached the final climb with almost two minutes on the first exponent of a drip of cyclists who had formed the first chasing group, a small group in which the Kometa Cycling Team had the presence of Carlos García and Edu Pérez-Landaluce, a small group that rolled just over a minute from the head of the race and that fell apart in the last kilometers. The asturian ended up suffering a tremendous bird in the final part and dropped, finishing in 40th position at 7:44 from the winner.
“The truth is that the stage has been quite hard, and even more so with the weather. In the first port everything was broken and the second was a marshmallow. With six kilometres to go, I was in the group with Carlos, but I’m completely empty. I was carrying one of the big ones. In spite of everything I am happy and tomorrow we will give everything again”, explains the one from Oviedo.
“Here people walk a lot and if you add to that that you suffer some mishap and you have to go against the skirting board, well worse. At the beginning of Portet d´Aspet there was a hook and I ended up being pulled. I couldn’t get the chain in and when I finally started the group was going far. Almost at the top I was able to catch the first ones, but I spent a lot there. It ended up marching a small group that I tried to catch with two other riders in the flat stretch between ports. We managed to get right to the start of La Core and can hold until there were three kilometers left to crown. I had a lot of accumulated wear and tear and I gave up”, explains Carlos García, first classified in the general classification of the team (36º, at 5: 36).
Rafa Diaz Justo, director: “A day spent by water, with a climate shooting cold, which has gone very fast. The intensity doesn’t make you feel the temperature many times, but the problem of these stages of water and cold is that they cause important fainting. This is what happened to Edu. The race is dominated by seven or eight continental teams and at the end this is another league, because you compete against professionals, or semi, in an extreme route. And if you put an adverse climate to the course, much harder everything. Now it’s time to rest for this Saturday, because another stage is coming”.
The Toledan director refers to a third stage in which he highlights the ascent to Col de Pailherés, with its peak at 2,000 meters of altitude and 16.5 kilometers from the finish line in Quérigut. The weather forecasts are similar to those of this Friday.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
