Team Bahrain Victorious riders excel in World Tour races

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Sonny Colbrelli led a fantastic one-two for Team Bahrain Victorious yesterday on the most challenging stage of the Benelux Tour, which is being held in Belgium and the Netherlands. The event is part of the 2021 calendar of the UCI World Tour.

Colbrelli won the race’s penultimate leg ahead of teammate Matej Mohoric to move into the overall leader’s jersey with the final stage to be held today. Mohoric, on the other hand, moved to second on the general classification (GC), making for a promising finish for the Bahraini outfit. In yesterday’s 207.6km stage, the riders faced some steep climbs over the final laps.

Over the concluding 50km, Colbrelli joined Mohoric and a number of others on the attack, and they continued their action while behind the peloton split. With 25km to go, a solo attack of Colbrelli turned out to be the winning move.

With Mohoric stopping the chase, the Italian maintained a substantial advantage of seconds to storm to a tremendous solo victory. Behind him, a reduced chasing group sprinted for runner-up place, and to complete Team Bahrain Victorious’ excellent work, Mohoric took second place. With yesterday’s result, Colbrelli now enjoys an advantage of 51 seconds to Mohoric on the GC.

Colbrelli commented afterwards: “It has probably been one of the hardest races of my life. “With Matej, we attack in the first of the final laps…then we agreed to try one time each. When it was up to me, I went that it was a bit early actually and I didn’t think to arrive alone. But I always kept a good tempo and never looked back. “I’m so happy as I can say to have done something extraordinary. It never happened to me to win a race this way. “Tomorrow, let’s see how I will recover as today I spent a lot.

But as a team, we also have Matej ready to fight for the GC.” Meanwhile, at the gruelling 21-stage Vuelta a Espana in Spain, which is also a part of the UCI World Tour, Team Bahrain Victorious riders Jack Haig and Gino Mader made their way up in the GC yesterday.

Haig moved onto the podium while Mader moved into the top five with only the final stage left to go today. Mader also moved into the white jersey in the best young rider classification ahead of the Vuelta finale.