Zamora: The fight for the overall intensifies and Andrea Montoli is there

Third stage, third change of leader, third day with a rider of the U23 team of the Contador Foundation in the places of honour and in the fight for the victory. An important fraction, with a very winding route, punctuated by seven climbs scoring for the Grand Prix of the mountains, marked by alternatives and lack of pause and respite in a context of winding and twisty roads of botoso firm, narrow platform shrinking at times on its flanks and old greyish colours. Jan Castellón (Caja Rural) launched an attack on the penultimate climb and managed to cross the finish line with a minimal gap over a small group in whose vanguard was Andrea Montoli. The Italian would eventually finish fourth.

With 15 kilometres to go, a breakaway of four riders was running with a minute and a half of margin and the joint work of the EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team, the Gomur team and Caja Rural allowed to bring it down before the penultimate climb, the hardest of the day and with ramps of up to 12% in its more than three kilometres of length, in which a Castellón capable of amassing and holding fifteen seconds would move. Behind, many movements and many alternatives that highlighted twenty cyclists, but the hunt could not materialise. Castellón, with the prize of the stage, climbs to the lead of a general classification in which, although Edoardo Alleva and Tommaso Bessega fall out of the top ten, Andrea Montoli takes a step ahead, this Saturday, of the great mountain stage of the race. Montoli is fourteenth, 6 seconds behind Castellón: the same difference that separates nineteen other riders from the lead. Everything is wide open.

Siete altos de montaña jalonan la etapa reina de esta Vuelta a Zamora, doble paso por el encadenado Ladiairo y Marabón, cortos pero de gran dureza, antes de la ascensión final al Parque Eólico de Lubián, casi seis kilómetros a una media próxima al 10%. Comenta Andrea Montoli: “La de mañana es el día clave y vamos a ver qué pasa. Estoy contento por cómo han ido las cosas hoy. Posiblemente ha sido un día mucho más duro de lo que se pensaba, además apareció el viento y se han producido tentativas de corte, pero hemos solventado bien la situación estando delante. Los chicos han hecho un trabajazo bestial todo el día. Gabriele Bessega se ha vaciado para dejar la fuga a menos de 30”, una labor impresionante”.

[? Álvaro García / Vuelta Ciclista a Zamora]