CYCLING – TEAM Bahrain Victorious clinched the best team award yesterday as the 21st edition of the Tour of Britain wrapped up in Wales.
Bahrain Victorious competed in the six-stage elite men’s road race with six of their top riders, including Briton Fred Wright, Italian Edoardo Zambanini, Spaniard Pello Bilbao, Portuguese Afonso Eulalio, and Slovenians Matevz Govekar and Zak Erzen.
They finished first overall on the teams’ standings with a combined race time of 58 hours 35 minutes and 57 seconds – two minutes and 31 seconds ahead of teams’ runners-up Anicolour-Tien 21 and 3:39 in front of third-placers Ineos Grenadiers.
Bahrain Victorious enjoyed a strong finish to the event yesterday, with Wright climbing the podium for third place and Zambanini narrowly missing out on the top three by placing fourth in the race’s sixth and final stage. Bilbao was a solid 12th while Eulalio came 22nd.
They were all part of the leading group that battled in a sprint to the finish. Olav Kooij of Team Visma-Lease a Bike was the victor at the end of the 112.2km course, which started from Newport and concluded in Cardiff. Samuel Watson of Ineos Grenadiers was the runner-up, inching ahead of Wright and Zambanini.
With yesterday’s results, Eulalio was Bahrain Victorious’ top-ranked competitor on the final general classification (GC). He was 12 seconds behind overall race winner Romain Gregoire of Groupama-FDJ. Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quick-Step and Julian Alaphilippe of Tudor Pro Cycling Team joined Gregoire on the GC podium.
Meanwhile, Zambanini placed in the top 10 in the race’s points rankings, while Wright finished 13th in the King of the Mountains standings.
In another major elite road race yesterday in Europe, Bahrain Victorious’ Santiago Buitrago almost scored his own podium finish in stage 15 of La Vuelta a Espana – the third and final Grand Tour of the international cycling season.
Buitrago came fourth in the 167.8km leg, which departed from Vegadeo and arrived at Monforte de Lemos. The Colombian was near the front of the group that battled it out in a sprint finish, just behind stage winner Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek, who won in 4:02:13.
With the 21-leg race heading into its last week, which will begin tomorrow following a rest day today, Norwegian Torstein Traeen remained Bahrain Victorious’ top-ranked rider in the event’s GC. He dropped one position yesterday to 10th.
&uuid=(email))