Sixth place for Manuel Belletti on the third stage of the Tour of Turkey
56º Presidential Tour of Turkey
Stage 3: Beysehir – Alanya (212.6 km)
The longest day of this edition of the Turkish race emerged as another ideal day for a sprint resolution and so it was. In the crew finish in Alanya, Mark Cavendish, the leader of the race, won again and Manuel Belletti actively participated in the battle. The fast man of EOLO-KOMETA, with a great management of the final kilometre, finished sixth. A good result to continue the work.
Belletti’s sixth place was the finishing touch to the intense work carried out once again by the whole team around him. The watchword was to protect the rider from Gatteo, to take him well protected and to lead him to the final sprint with the maximum saving of energy. Beforehand, however, in the early stages, the formation of the breakaway was also fought over. Belletti was able to reach the final kilometre and a half well placed and there he deployed all his experience and good work.
Despite the configuration of a breakaway of four that opened the race for a good part of the day, the pace throughout the day was very lively. In the initial part, where the riders had to manage the more mountainous and broken terrain in the Western Taurus Mountains, the average pace was around 45 km/h. When the riders reached the Mediterranean Sea, along which they cycled in the last third of the stage, the speed did not appear to be around the 50 km/h they were flying at that stage. An additional wear and tear in the face of the sprint.
“I’m happy with this result, but obviously the goal is still to get the victory and we will keep fighting to achieve it”, says Belleti. His sixth place equals the best classification of an EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team rider so far (Luca Pacioni, sixth in the Classica Comunitat Valenciana 1969). “The stage had its difficulty, but it suits me better when it has more kilometres and when the course is more difficult. The team was once again very good today in the final. The finish was an invitation for many teams to take part in the ‘volata’ and that made it a bit more complicated. I lost positions with three kilometres to go and I had to make a big effort to recover them and face the sprint as well as possible”.
“We tried to be with Manuel at all times, to protect him, but it is always complicated. Towards the end Albanese and Frapporti were with him. Today’s was an easy finish in terms of layout, but also when it’s so straight everyone gets in the way and it’s not such a clean finish. And it can go well or it can go badly. Manuel has shown that he is a really good sprinter. We are in the fight and we will continue in this line, because we still have a lot of opportunities ahead of us”, says Diego Pablo Sevilla.
On Wednesday, 184.4 kilometres between Alanya and Kemer. A stage entirely by the Mediterranean Sea, along the so-called Turkish Riviera, in which, apart from a few steep slopes and a slightly uphill finish, there are no major orographic difficulties. Another day for the breakaway and the sprint.
[ Yücel Yüksek / Presidential Tour of Turkey]
