In the first stage from Cordoba, Romero and Leao Pinto won another stage. However the minutes they lost in stage 3 mean they still have a deficit to make up on the general classification. The Topeak Ergon Team of Alban Lakata and Kristian Hynek who finished today sprinting with the Portuguese pair now move into the leader’s jersey after today’s second place.
Tiago Oliveira and David Rosa, who were leaders until today, lost their position due to a broken chain. “Today we lost the event”, confessed Oliveira. However, we will “still fight to be in the podium”. Tomorrow’s stage will be exciting with several teams fighting for the final victory. They are closely followed by the Stöckli team of Mathias Flueckiger and Nicola Rohrbach, who were third today.
Milena Landtwing and Ester Süss remain as leaders in the woman’s elite category. Claudia Galicia and Tania Zakelj´s victory today put them in second overall only 5 minutes behind the Swiss. Belgium Pirard and Michiels are strongly consolidating the third step of the podium.
It was a day of what if’s for the Mountain Trax – Vauxhall Motors Cycling Team. We snapped a chain early on, messed up the repair by losing the chain link. Once fixed the chain was twisted so we had to stop at feed 1 where we fitted a new chain. From well outside the top 100 we recovered to 26th. A missed opportunity as both of us felt good today and would have been on for a top 20 result based on the time splits we had after the repair. Today there were some great flowing trails, these were thoroughly enjoyed by all. I recognised many trails having raced here in Cordoba in 2012 and 2013, it was just a shame we had traffic all day and couldn’t take advantage. At least we got a suntan today. Tomorrow’s stage 6 is another opportunity.
Tomorrow´s stage, the last one of this edition, will be essential for the final results of almost all the categories. However there are only 55 kilometres and 1144 meters of ascent to cover.