Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2025, Spain, February 5-9

[armchairclimber]

Well that was fun. Brutal, but fun. So far a pretty entertaining race for the naysayers.

 

[Netserk]

Vacek
Almeida +02"
Buitrago +05"

 

[armchairclimber]

Vacek
Almeida +02"
Buitrago +05"

That's epic from Vacek. Shame he was in my CQ team 2 years ago but not this year.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Tomorrow nailed on to be a GC day now.

 

[Ilmaestro99]

29 year old world tour neo pro Jefferson alvero cepeda 4th on a MTF ahead of all the ineos and bora riders, yeah it's gonna be a great year

 

[Lequack]

What an exciting and brutal stage to start the GC season. Weird move by Buitrago to attack his teammate, everyone knows you wait and hang on and only attack if your teammate gets caught. Ride of the day was Vacek for sure, for a non GC guy he sure gave everyone a run for their money.

 

[Tim Cahill]

RB seem kinda fraudulent recently sans Rog

Don't know what happened to O'Connor either, usually good in these, maybe those Decathlon bikes give you wings.

 

[postmanhat]

A good Ivan Sosa performance to start the year was not on my 2025 bingo card

Shame Kern-Pharma are so bad at TTT for this race. He could earn them a lot of points in those asian unipuerto races though.

 

[YavorD]

What an exciting and brutal stage to start the GC season. Weird move by Buitrago to attack his teammate, everyone knows you wait and hang on and only attack if your teammate gets caught. Ride of the day was Vacek for sure, for a non GC guy he sure gave everyone a run for their money.

With the GC situation I don't blame Buitrago for attacking.
I don't think it will be easy to gap Vacek tomorrow and every second may count.

 

[Netserk]

And Vacek can take bonus seconds in the coming stages. Especially if he is led out by Milan.

And as TTTs are in whole seconds, lowest stage sum is the tie-breaker.

 

[Lequack]

And Vacek can take bonus seconds in the coming stages. Especially if he is led out by Milan.

And as TTTs are in whole seconds, lowest stage sum is the tie-breaker.

Depends on how much today has taken out of Vacek, he must've gone way over the limit.

Not bad watts for the start of the season

 

[armchairclimber]

Looks like Israel Premier Tech said to Lutsenko, you go for it mate ...and the rest of them went for a coffee ride.

 

[Peyroteo94]

Depends on how much today has taken out of Vacek, he must've gone way over the limit.

Not bad watts for the start of the season

To be honest, it is not that good compared to the world class climbers.

 

[Netserk]

 

[Peyroteo94]

Buitrago will win this race. He just needs to win the stage

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

29 year old world tour neo pro Jefferson alvero cepeda 4th on a MTF ahead of all the ineos and bora riders, yeah it's gonna be a great year

Indeed. Also the fact that only six days ago he became the national TT champion.

 

[armchairclimber]

What happened to Blackmore? Not showing in the results.

 

[Tim Cahill]

What happened to Blackmore? Not showing in the results.

Crashed, maybe DNF?

 

[Mayomaniac]

2022 Bahrain has returned? One can hope.

 

[Lequack]

Meanwhile at the finish

 

[Escarabajo]

Buitrago should be fired for that. Idiot.

Surely his coach would have called him back. I think they had to make sure that they would take the win and the time. If Santi had waited the GC could have been out of reach. I think it was bad optics but the right strategy.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Surely his coach would have called him back. I think they had to make sure that they would take the win and the time. If Santi had waited the GC could have been out of reach. I think it was bad optics but the right strategy.

No, he should have attacked sooner when it was still in doubt whether Bilbao could hold on. If he had done that, he would also be leading the race now.

 

[nightowl]

Surely his coach would have called him back. I think they had to make sure that they would take the win and the time. If Santi had waited the GC could have been out of reach. I think it was bad optics but the right strategy.

This exactly. He would’ve been ~20 seconds behind Almeida if he had waited which would be tricky to make up on the easier stage tomorrow.

 

[Salvarani]

Meanwhile at the finish

Geraint at it again

 

[Tim Cahill]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1887595153457881400

Hmm surely not, that would make it one of the best 10-15 minute efforts of all time and other randomers weren't far behind, think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

I've been thinking there must be some kind of mistake in a lot of these estimates since Plateau de Beille, because it's like there are 10 Contador level riders tipping up to every 2.1 all of a sudden.