Márton Dina, after the Valencia stage: “I gave everything to be as high as possible in the classification”
71ª Vuelta a la Comunitat Valenciana
Etapa 5: Paterna – Valencia, 98 km
With the five members of the team that completed the five days of competition entering the peloton, this Sunday closed next to the city council of the capital of the Turia a Tour of the Comunitat Valenciana in which the Hungarian Márton Dina, 25º to 3:27 of the first place, was the best classified of the Kometa-Xstra Cycling Team in the final general classification; a classification where the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates) won. Dina is the first rider from a continental category and, within the top 25 places, is the fourth rider who does not belong to a WorldTour team.
“We finished a Vuelta a la Comunitat Valenciana which has been a great experience, up to now it’s the highest level race I’ve taken part in. And it has been a race with a very hard course and, as we expected, a great command of the WorldTour formations. We were not very lucky during the second stage, we lost two riders and that conditioned our day to day a little. But my teammates did a great job protecting me in the race and fighting to be in the breaks. I gave everything to be as high as possible in the classification”, explains Márton Dina, the sixth best rider of the race under 25 years old.
A last stage again with a measured mileage and again starring, in the context of a high pace, by the pulse between a breakaway and the teams with interests in the mass finish. He could not take that breakaway, this time four riders, none of the Kometa-Xstra riders and it only remained to see what would happen in the sprint and what routes he would take. In the volata, the Dutchman Fabio Jakobsen (Deceuninck-Quick Step) imposed his top speed.
In previous years this last stage had brought very good performances to the sprint of members of the continental team of the Alberto Contador Foundation (Michele Gazzoli was sixth last year and eleventh in 2018), but the development of the 2020 edition for the team has not been easy: it was no longer his pure sprinter, Danish Mathias Larsen, nor did it have the Italian Giacomo Garavaglia in the best conditions, battered by a couple of falls. Garavaglia, precisely, concluded in the last place of the general classification, more than 40 minutes away from the winner.
Jesús Hernández, director of the Kometa-Xstra Cycling Team, takes stock of these five days of competition: “We all like to win or at least be as far ahead as possible. But you also have to take into account where you are competing and against whom. This Vuelta a la Comunitat Valenciana has once again had a great level of participation. To always race against World Tour formations, and in this race there were twelve, poses its difficulty. You have to run without complexes and showing that we are a team. In our particular case, we also had to adapt to the circumstances, as on the second day we lost a rider who was in good shape and able to make a good general classification, like Alejandro Ropero, and our sprinter, Mathias Larsen. Moreover, Giacomo Garavaglia continued to ride, but he fell on two days and was badly injured. The boys have multiplied to fight to be in the breakaway and to work to protect Márton. And in that sense they have been sensational and I leave very satisfied of this Vuelta a la Comunitat Valenciana”.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
? Atila Madrona (1)
? @VueltaCV (2)
