CYCLING – TEAM Bahrain Victorious riders Pello Bilbao and Jakob Omrzel both had impressive results yesterday while taking top 10 finishes in separate road cycling events in Europe.
Bilbao took eighth place overall in the third stage of the 88th Tour de Suisse in Switzerland, while Omrzel ranked sixth at the end of the third stage in the 48th Giro d’Italia Next Gen in Italy.
In the Swiss event, Bilbao from Spain was part of the trailing group that finished 18 seconds behind winner Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek team, who completed the 195.6-kilometre leg in four hours 39 minutes and 42 seconds.
Amongst the other Bahrain Victorious members, Finlay Pickering from Britain came 33rd while Rainer Kepplinger from Austria finished 34th. Matej Mohoric from Slovenia was 64th and Mathijs Paasschens of the Netherlands came 73rd. Italian Nicolo Buratti completed the team’s roster in 94th amongst the field of nearly 150 competitors.
Following yesterday’s results, Kepplinger remained the best-paced rider on the general classification (GC), despite dropping two places to 11th. He was close to two minutes behind current leader Romain Gregoire of Groupama-FDJ. Bilbao improved four places to 20th.
Pickering went up three places to 13th in the best young rider classification, where he remained over five minutes behind Gregoire.
Mohoric stayed in the top 20 in both the points and King of the Mountains rankings despite registering drops.
Bahrain Victorious climbed two spots to eighth in the teams’ rankings after three stages. They were four minutes from Movistar Team in first place.
This year’s eight-stage Tour de Suisse continues today with stage four, to be held across 193.2km. The elite men’s road race is part of the 2025 calendar of the UCI WorldTour.
Meanwhile, in Italy, Omrzel was racing with Bahrain Victorious Development Team. The Slovenian completed the 144km third stage 32 seconds behind winner Jarno Widar of Lotto Development Team, who had a winning mark of 3:28:34.
Kasper Borremans from Finland finished 22nd yesterday while Alessandro Borgo from Italy was 73rd. Bryan Olivo, also from Italy, and Seth Dunwoody, from Ireland, completed their side’s participation and finished 117th and 123rd, respectively.
Omrzel’s strong performance yesterday boosted his rise on the GC by a massive 55 positions. He is now seventh, only a minute behind overall leader Widar.
He also improved seven positions to fourth on the best young rider rankings, and stayed 23rd in the points and eighth in the KoM standings.
Bahrain Victorious Development Team kept their position in ninth on the teams standings.
Also being held over eight stages, the Giro d’Italia Next Gen continues today with the fourth leg, covering 134km.
The event, also known as ‘Baby Giro’, is an amateur road race that is one of the most important and formative events on the under-23 international cycling calendar.
&uuid=(email))