Fernando Tercero, tenth in the Memorial Valenciaga Fiftieth Anniversary

50º Memorial Valenciaga
Eibar – Santuario de Arrate (153 km)

The Spanish Cup Elite and U23 resumed its activity with the celebration this Sunday of what the sanitary situation has become the second scoring race of this edition, nothing less than a Memorial Valenciaga of Eibar that celebrated 50 editions. In the prestigious Basque race, which this year was wet, Fernando Tercero from La Mancha finished tenth. An edition in which the Catalan Pau Miquel won.

The climb to San Miguel, the penultimate orographic difficulty of the race, were the stage where Igor Arrieta, first, and Pau Miquel, later, moved. The two, temporarily accompanied by Eugenio Sánchez, reached the base of the final climb with a minute’s margin over a chasing group in which the Catalan Álex Martín had tried to shorten the disadvantage to ride alone in pursuit of the Lizarte riders shortly before the final pass through Eibar.

Without a great breakaway to open the race in this edition, with many attempts that never came to fruition and even less to consolidate, the race came to the climb to Aia practically grouped together. On the descent, the large group broke up and Marc Brustenga, leader of the Cup, his team-mate Mikel Mujika and Joseba López came out of the group. The trio would later be caught by a quartet that included Vicente Hernaiz from Puebla with 50 kilometres to go. There was no understanding between the seven despite the interesting movement and they were finally caught six kilometres later.

“It was a very tough day in terms of weather. The descent to Ixua played a fundamental role as Lizarte went flat out there and caused a break where their superiority played a fundamental role”, explains Fernando Tercero.

[📷 Lartaun Iturbe (1); Club Ciclista Eibarrés (3)]