Today was the transition stage at Andalucia Bike Race, with the start and arrival in Mancha Real. A very technical and short stage at just 51 kilometres.
Pedro Romero and Luis Leao Pinto who are riding as a pair for the first time at Andalucia Bike Race, have now not only won the two first stages, but today they also clinched victory in the fourth stage.
They lost 17 minutes yesterday due to a puncture and a broken chain, the reason why Portuguese Tiago Oliveira and David Rosa, second today, are still overall leaders. However, Romero and Pinto are still hopeful they could overcome the time gap.
Alban Lakata and Kristian Hynek, from Topeak Ergon Team were third again today and are cementing their second position in the overall.
Bad luck touched Merida´s team. Both José Antonio Hermida and Thomas Litscher, suffered from illness today and neither finished the stage. Therefore the Multivan Merida team was left with no representation in this year’s Andalucia Bike Race.
In the women’s category Claudia Galicia and Tania Zakelj clinched todays stage victory. Milena Landtwing and Ester Süss were second today, but keep their overall leadership with a big advantage.
The Mountain Trax – Vauxhall Cycling Team had a difficult day but the result was not too bad finishing 25th and within a minute of the top 20. We still managed to move up to 22nd on GC after today, top 20 is still possible by the end of the week. My breathing was very heavy early on and I struggled to latch onto the lead group as we’ve done in previous days, I improved though once properly warmed up. It was Dylan’s time to have the bad legs, he kept his motivation though and pushed through the pain which is why we still managed a decent result. Hopefully we can both have good legs tomorrow for stage 5.
The 5th stage of Andalucía Bike Race will start and finish in Cordoba, the city will host the last two last stages.