Santiago Buitrago Wins Volta a La Communitat Valenciana

As the team was delighted to point out on its website, its dominant performance, led by the 25-year-old Colombian, also included two second-place stage finishes and two of the three GC podium places, as home rider Pello Bilbao finished third, 39 seconds behind his teammate. Pre-race favorite João Almeida, of last year’s all-conquering UAE Team Emirates–XRG, finished second in the race, 18 seconds adrift.

“It’s a fantastic feeling,” Buitrago was quoted as saying on the team’s website. “I was already super happy after yesterday’s [Saturday’s stage 4] result and to wear the leader’s jersey this morning, but you never know until the very end. I have to give a huge thank you to my teammates. Today could have been tricky, but they worked exceptionally well to keep everything under control. I share this GC victory with them. Starting the season with such a result is incredible.”

The final stage, 104.2 flat kilometers from Alfafar to Valencia, was always going to end in a bunch sprint, which was won by the odds-on favorite, Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek). In a race with few top sprinters, and with potential rival Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) dropping out before the start of the stage, it was always going to be there for the taking for the two-time Giro d’Italia points classification winner. And he made no mistake, powering over the line well ahead of second-place finisher Jake Stewart (Israel–Premier Tech).

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But this race belonged to Buitrago and Bahrain Victorious. On stage 2, it was Bilbao who led on the tough ascent to the summit at Benimantell (5.5km @ 7%). He was caught with 1.5km to go by Almeida, Buitrago and Jefferson Cepeda (Movistar). When the two Bahran Victorious riders accelerated inside the 1km mark, neither Almeida nor Cepeda could answer. Buitrago then zipped past his teammate for a one-two Bahrain finish.

At that point, Almeida sat second in the GC, behind the surprising Czech Mathias Vacek, whose Lidl-Trek team had won the stage 1 team time trial by a good margin, and 3 seconds ahead of Buitrago. That ended in the up-and-down finish to stage 4 (181km from Oropesa del Mar to Portell de Morella). Movistar’s Pablo Castrillo chased down and eventually passed Jon Agirre (Euskaltel-Euskadi) with 39km and took off on a serious solo ride. He led by 30 seconds with 17km to race as UAE Team Emirates–XRG took up the chase.

Castrillo was eventually passed by teammate Cepeda, who had a 15-second lead with only 3km left to ride. Buitrago, Milan and his Lidl-Trek teammate Jakob Söderqvist soon passed him, and the Colombian proved much the stronger, finishing the stage 6 seconds ahead of the Lidl-Trek duo and cementing his first-ever GC win and his points classification victory, as Almeida and UAE Team Emirates–XRG looked uncharacteristically helpless. Its American rider Brandon McNulty, who was the defending champion, was often prominent, but could finish not better than fifth.

Though it was only a second-level 2.Pro race, Bahrain-Victorious Sports Director Roman Kreuziger was justifiably delighted. “We couldn’t have asked for more,” he said. “We set out to win a stage and took two. We aimed for a top-three GC finish, and we secured two spots on the podium—including the overall victory. Plus, we won the team classification. It’s something to be very proud of.”

On another note, Buitrago was not the only Colombian to celebrate an important victory this weekend. The 2019 Tour de France winner Egan Bernal (ONEOS Grenadiers) won his first races since suffering a near-fatal training accident three years and two months ago as he won Thursday’s Colombian ITT national championship and Sunday’s road race national championship.

Though it is true that the best Colombian riders are now riding in Europe, Bernal’s margins of victory suggest that he is finally returning to better, if not his best, form. He won the ITT – his first race victory in three years and eight months – by 49.68 seconds over Walter Vargas (Team Medellin–EPM) and the road race by a whopping 2:16 over Vargas teammate Diego Camargo.