Andalucía Bike Race’s fifth edition finished today in Cordoba, the city hosted the last two of six stages. In both the men and females the final result depended on today´s performances, with the leaders tightly packed on GC, and only 55 kilometers left to race. With the distance so short it was always going to be full gas all the way.
At the end, Topeak Ergon Team, Alban Lakata and Kristian Hynek of the Topeak Ergon Team clinched overall victory and also took the final stage victory. “We wanted to prove we deserved the victory, so a stage win was very important to us”, confessed Lakata. Delighted with the event, Hynek confirmed they are “100% sure we will be back next year”. Hynek won the first edition of Andalucia Bike Race back in 2011, while Lakata took victory in 2013 with Robert Mennen. This is their first victory as a pair.
Tiago Oliveira and David Rosa were second, and the Extremadura MTB team members, Pedro Romero and Luis Leao Pinto took the third step of the podium.
Looking ahead to the Cape Epic in 2 weeks time the results are worth noting, it’s no surprise that Topeak Ergon 1 came out on top, team 2 recovered well to finish 6th overall after illness slowed them in the early stages. Karl Platt and Urs Huber of Team Bulls finished 7th some 45 minutes off of the win. The second Bulls team were a none finish, as were both Multivan Merida teams who succumbed to illness. Centurion Vaude team 2 finished down in 28th and team 1 were a none finish, after last year’s win it can only be a disappointment.
In the woman’s category Belgium Michiels and Pirard finally took a stage victory, and secured third in the overall. Milena Landtwing and Ester Süss took the GC win with Claudia Galicia and Tania Zakelj´s of Polar Team in second.
The Mountain Trax – Vauxhall Cycling Team again didn’t have the best day but secured a solid result. Dylan had heavy legs, that’s the tricky part with stage racing. During the early mountainous stages Dylan could quite easily have dropped me, in the later part of the race I got stronger whilst Dylan weakened. When the opportunity arose to make up some good time on GC during stage 5 we then snapped a chain. Anything can happen and that’s why stage racing is such an exciting challenge. We rode well as a team and because of that we turned an average day into a decent finish. 22nd place today and we moved up to 20th on GC. We can be happy with our UCI World Ranking points haul especially considering the strong competition here this year. Good results over the 6 days with no punctures, no crashes, no injuries and only 1 mechanical.
The fifth edition of Andalucia Bike Race can be seen a success with the largest attendance to date, 5 days of dry sunny weather, some amazing trails, and lots of exciting racing. Just as we thought back in 2012 and 2013, this event is one of the best in the world and for that reason we can highly recommend you sign up for the 2016 edition.