El granadino Ropero, second overall in A Coruña
XVII Vuelta a Provincia da Coruña
Stage 2: Curtis-Curtis (133 km)
Saturday leaves exciting perspectives within the Polartec-Kometa U23 for the Sunday day. Alejandro Ropero from Granada was promoted to second place in the provisional general standings of the Vuelta a la Provincia da Coruña after a second stage in which he got involved in the final sprint and finished seventh. Ropero, who started in fifth position in the general standings, was involved in a finish where among the seven riders who remain tied on time only the leader, Antonio Angulo (Rias Baixas), came in front of him. Angulo would finish second on a second day where Uruguayan Anderson Maldonado (Construcciones Paulino) won.
“I got in there in the sprint as far ahead as I could, even though I got a little locked in. And I’ve been fighting it all the time before I got to the finish line. Tomorrow we’ll have to give the rest to try to finish this off,” said the Otura rider, who also took the podium again as the best U23 rider and also as the new leader of the overall intermediate sprints. Alejandro Regueiro, fifth in the sprint of Curtis, rounded off another Polartec-Kometa double in the top ten of the Galician event. Colombian John Stiven Ramirez, 12th, and Joan Martí Bennassar, 19th, were the other riders who arrived in the first group. And Sergio Garcia entered a few seconds slightly cut.
Rafa Díaz Justo, director: “We’re very happy with Alejandro’s second place, but we’re not going to settle for it. Let’s see if we can get you a nice day this Sunday. For us today has been a relatively comfortable stage. The hard, hard stage is tomorrow. I had told the guys that we had to run as quietly as possible and our goal was to eat and drink on wheels. There is a guerrilla war going on here and our only interest in it is to advance positions without making any noise. And so we are doing. It is true that tomorrow is another day, it will be very demanding, many things will happen. The last port is very serious, it is a hard eight km climb and has a very dangerous descent. A priori any Froiz rider could have had it very well, because there are several involved in the general classification, but Ropero has shown us that he is in good shape; in the port of the day five cyclists have crowned ahead and he has been one of them. On equal terms reaching the finish line I think the leader has a very easy race, he is the fastest, but today it is true that it has been shown that he is alone soon if the race is revolutionized and that is something that can make him nervous. We’ll see”.
This Sunday concludes the race with a stage of great orographic difficulty and no less complexity in the descents. A not very long stage, 125 kilometres with start and finish in Cariño, but which includes three points for the mountain grand prix and has almost 3,000 metres of positive gradient. With the permission of A Faladoira and Cruz Encarnada, the ascent and descent of the Garita de Herbeira (680 m) will help to resolve the question of who will be the champion of this edition.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes).
📸 El Pelotón
