15-Apr-2010: A late stage split in the peloton was not a problem for Theo Bos (NED) who survived it to continue his winning streak at the Vuelta a Castilla y León. Bos rode victorious into the northern Spanish city of Palencia, once again defeating Graeme Brown (AUS-Rabobank) for the third time this season. Oscar Grau, (ESP-Burgos 2016) finished third upstaging many in today’s peloton. With the victory Bos retains the GC leadership for another day.
“Our goal today for the team was the same as yesterday – to bring Theo successfully to the sprint,” explained Alex Sans Vega, sport director. “The stage, though the longest of this race was not so hard. There were no big climbs on it and like yesterday the wind will be the main player of the day, so there were a lot of attacks from the start. Finally, after all those attacks four riders broke away and achieved a maximum time gap of seven and half minutes. Since it was Rabobank who had one of those riders in the break, it was clear they were not going to help us to work for the final sprint. So, we just worked in the front since the breakaway was gone, first just to keep the time gap and afterwards we pushed harder and harder as we got closer to the finish line. Then Astana about halfway through the race started to collaborate with us a bit. There was a crosswind the last 30 kilometres from the finish and with about 20 kilometres to go we changed direction on the road a bit. At that point Astana travelled on and Radio Shack, the main teams with riders in the GC, also were riding really hard to split the group. They finally did split the group and they also took back the two riders left in the break. Theo and Stefan were able to stay in this first group. The rest of the guys on the team were very tired because of the work they had to do during the stage. Also Ignatas Konovalovas (LTU) had a flat right at the moment the groups started to split. But Stefan did a good job for Theo in the final.”
“I felt much better today than yesterday. But it was quite hard, especially the final that was pretty heavy. It was a long, long stage today,” said Theo Bos. “At the beginning of the race a group of four riders attacked and when this group had a gap, then we took control in the bunch in order not give this group too much space. Oscar Pujol (ESP), Joaquín Novoa (ESP) and João Correia (POR) provided great support and were incredible today. They controlled the bunch the entire day until we took the group back.
“With 20 kilometres to go Rabobank increased the speed in the peloton and I think we were left with a group of 20 riders. I thought I was the only one there from our team but at the last moment Stefan was able to make the jump to this group and helped me out in the final. I stayed perfectly positioned in the front in the final kilometres. There were two roundabouts in the last 600 metres and a sharp corner at the 100 metres mark, so it became a pretty technical final. With 200 metres to go Brown was on my right side and made his move, but I was able to pass him and went again to the victory,” said a happy Theo Bos. “Tomorrow the course will be pretty hard with two hard climbs. My aim is to maintain my position and hopefully get some chances this week.”
Stage 2: Burgos – Palencia 209.9km
1 Theo Bos (NED) Cervélo TestTeam
2 Graeme Brown (AUS) Rabobank
3 Oscar Grau (ESP) Burgos 2016-Castilla
8 Stefan Denifl (AUT) Cervélo TestTeam
Article Courtesy of: Cervelo Test Team