Haimar Etxeberria and Tommaso Bessega, among the top ten at the start in Cantabria

With a pleasant temperature at the start and rain in the final part, the Vuelta a Cantabria got underway on Monday with a first day that had to modify the final part of the planned route, which included the steep climb of the Sauceda Cemetery and its vertiginous descent near the finish line, due to unfinished road works. The first stage was won by a breakaway, by the minimum, and in which the U23 structure of the Contador Foundation had two riders, Haimar Etxeberria and Tommaso Bessega, in the top ten.

The last pass through La Montaña, with the changes, emerged as the hot spot for the resolution of the partial triumph. There, in its final stages, Daniel Cavia (Gomur) moved, Pablo Carrascosa (Finisher) also moved, and both caught up with a race leader formed by Sinué Fernández (Cortizo), Candem Feint (Aix-en-Provence) and Daniel Rodríguez (Nesta). That regroup managed to hold on for a few seconds, just seven, to play for the win over a peloton in whose vanguard were Haimar Etxeberria and Tommaso Bessega, eighth and ninth respectively.

Etxeberria and Fran Muñoz were the protagonists of movements kilometres earlier, in response to the work carried out by the whole bunch in the last 50 kilometres, when they took the reins of the work against a very dangerous breakaway of seventeen riders, who managed to consolidate more than a minute’s margin in a phase of the race where the main peloton slowed down its leading pace and after a long phase of small breakaways with minimal rents that allowed for a very controlled development.

Cavia comes out as the leader of the mountain round, with Etxeberria as the best placed in the general classification for the blue team. “We came out of the first day well, we have been in the pomada. In the end a cut went away and we couldn’t neutralise them. But we are happy to have saved the day, it was a complicated day that didn’t have the best weather. We have to think about the second stage”. For this Tuesday, the second stage, almost 135 kilometres with the finish in Marina de Cudeyo, with the Puerto de Alisas, which will be climbed via Arredondo (almost 9 km at 5.8%), will be crowned in the final 30 kilometres and will be tackled after passing through the Puerto de Fuente Las Varas and Cruz de Usaño. The Paco Ruíz summit will be a fundamental enclave.