Outstanding participation of Michel Ries and Stefano Oldani in the Tour del Porvenir, with seventh place in the Luxembourger’s final
56º Tour of l´Avenir
Stage 10: Saint-Colomban-des-Villards – Le Corbier (79.1 km)
This Sunday, at the Le Corbier winter sports centre, a new edition of the Tour du Porvenir closed. Both Luxembourg’s Michel Ries and Italy’s Stefano Oldani, the two riders of the Kometa Cycling Team who took part with their respective teams, put together an outstanding global performance. Ries finished second in the last race, 26 seconds behind Ecuadorian Jefferson Cepeda, and jumped to seventh place in a final general in which Norwegian Tobias Foss won.
The Gran Ducado cyclist, bib 151, had already touched victory in this edition of l´Avenir. Ries finished second in Col de la Loze, the finish of a seventh stage of just 23 kilometres. At the end of the famous Méribel Ries station, he jumped five places in the general standings and entered the top ten. In the mountains, his terrain and the performance of the Kometa Cycling Team rider have been very good and have confirmed an ascending line: four days always within the top-13 of the day.
This Sunday, Ries was very active, riding in the breakaway with Cepeda and the Spaniard Íñigo Elosegui. “I am very happy with the race I did. I gave everything and in the end I finished with two second places and this seventh place in the overall final is a very nice balance”, explains Ries.
Stefano Oldani also caressed the victory. The number 56 of this edition finished third in Mauriac’s finish line, the end of a third stage in which he was beaten by the British Ethan Hayter and Thomas Pidcock, and two days later he signed another outstanding fifth place in the arrival to Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, a minute and a half away from the trio that played the victory. “We worked hard for the options of Giovanni Aleotti, who in the end was second. Personally, satisfied. You always think about winning, when I had that possibility I stayed close. But the competition is a lot in a race like this”. Overall, Olda finished 32nd.
Karl Adam and Vas Balazs also took part in the French race, enrolled in the Hungarian national team. Both are stagiaires cyclists with the continental formation of the Alberto Contador Foundation. Balazs, dorsal 236, could not finish the race and had to retire during the penultimate stage. Adam, for his part, finished in 100th place.
“I unfortunately got involved in a big crash on the first stage in the last three kilometers in very good position for the sprint. The third day which was also good for me, before the finish there was a crash again but for fortune I could defend myself from crashing but I lost position… The remaining days were hard climbing stages, our team did very good as Valter won one of the climbing stages. For me it was a good experience to race ten days, despite I couldn’t reach the result in the sprints which I came for”, tells Adam.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
