Daniel Viegas, on the day’s break: “It was practically a copy of yesterday’s stage”
41ª Vuelta a Burgos
Stage 2: Gumiel de Izán – Lerma (155 km)
The Portuguese Daniel Viegas took over from his team-mate Diego Pablo Sevilla and was in charge of giving a lot of presence to the Kometa Cycling Team this Wednesday during the second stage of the Tour of Burgos 2019. A script similar to the one of the previous day, with an break in this occasion of four riders that starred two thirds of the development of the race, although the outcome could have been very different. The cyclist from Faro played a key role in the gestation of this adventure.
Viegas, Iker Ballarín (Euskadi Foundation), the Austrian Matthias Brändle (Israel Cycling Team) and the Russian Eugeny Kobernyak (Gazprom) soon stood out in the lead. Well avenues, collaborating with fluidity, were devouring kilometers in a context of large straights, open fields and some road or other descarnada. The platoon, with Dimension Data in command, never let them take too much time.
“In the end the stage has become tough today. They didn’t leave us much time, just two minutes during the whole stage. It was practically a copy of yesterday’s stage, with a controlled escape that is finally neutralised before the finish line. We’re going to see how we recover and how our legs are tomorrow”, says the Portuguese, who was the focus of attention during the television broadcast when the camera caught him storing the residues from his refreshment and then disposing of them in a container.
The nuance came from Brändle’s hand. The race has just crossed a bare road, one of those local roads so characteristic of the Burgos round, and in it the Ineos had played with a very high rhythm that made that in just two kilometers the leak lost more than half a minute. Passing the town of Tordómar and its Roman bridge, a small stop stopped what seemed to be an imminent hunt. But in front Brändle chose to revitalize his pulse with a demarraje that could only follow, temporarily, Ballarín. The Austrian started a pulse against a platoon where nobody wanted to shoot and the leader’s Dimension Data barely did it with two runners. In the end, between Ineos, Emirates, Burgos-BH and Vital Concept ended up chasing the exrecordman of the hour and a half from the finish.
In the explosive arrival at the Plaza Mayor of Lerma, in front of the majestic Ducal Palace, the Alava’s Jon Aberasturi (Caja Rural) won; Giacomo Nizzolo (Dimension Data), winner in the previous race, finished second and retained the purple leader’s jersey. An aesthetic arrival, also complicated by its narrowness, its firm paving and its ramps of 6%, in which the Hungarian Márton Dina finished twenty-fifth and first rider of the team in goal, five seconds from the winner. “Today has been a much better day, without a doubt. Yesterday I had the same legs, I also felt very good, but the big difference was in the absence of all kinds of bad luck,” jokes the magiar hours before the first key event of the race: the arrival at Picón Blanco. Even this old military installation, located at an altitude of 1,508 metres, is reached after 8.5 kilometres at an average of 9%.
Jesús Hernández, director of the Kometa Cycling Team: “Tomorrow comes the first important day of this Vuelta a Burgos and we are confident that we can recover time in the general classification with Márton after what he gave up yesterday as a consequence of the fall. Márton is doing well and has shown it today in the arrival in Lerma. The team has been sensational again, attentive to the indications. One of the objectives with which we came to the race was to let ourselves be seen and it is being achieved with more than enough. Viegas, who is a hard-working rider, set up a great stage. But that goes on and we’re not conformists. For us the Vuelta a Burgos is very important”. José Antonio García, 48th to 50 seconds; Martón Dina, 50th to 55th, and Isaac Cantón, 60th to 1:12, are the first three riders of the Kometa Cycling Team in the provisional general classification.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
? Félix Ordóñez / Vuelta a Burgos
