Buitrago wins in Saudi Tour for Bahrain Victorious

TDT | Manama  

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Santiago Buitrago powered to a fantastic victory for Team Bahrain Victorious yesterday in the second stage of the 2022 Saudi Tour. The leg featured a 164-kilometre ride starting from Taibah University just south of Al Ula and finishing at the plateau above Abu Rakah.

Buitrago took the win in a time of three hours 43 minutes 51 seconds, just a second ahead of his closest challenger. Buitrago is now the overall leader of the race and will wear the leader’s green jersey today.

He also leads the youth category, where he is joined in the top five of the race rankings by Bahrain Victorious teammate Fred Wright from Great Britain. The race is part of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) 2022 Asia Tour.

It is in its second edition. Buitrago escaped the peloton on the only climb of the stage with 800 metres to the finish. Daniel Oss of TotalEnergies team was the first to launch an attack, which Buitrago followed, and Andrea Bagioli of QuickStep went after them.

Buitrago passed Oss, but Bagiolli looked very strong and made ground on Buitrago. But Bahrain Victorious’ Colombian rider showed his sprinting prowess and crossed the finish a bike-length clear of Bagiolli for the win.

Said Buitrago, who claimed his first professional victory: “I’m really happy to win the stage today. It’s amazing. The team did great work for me the whole stage. The team did an incredible job for me today, to prevent any echelons. We had quite a lot of wind.

“When it was one km to go, I saw that I had good legs. We were only three guys fighting at the final. It was very tricky, and I didn’t think that I would have a lot of opportunities to win in the sprint, so I decided to try earlier.

I wanted to show my gratitude to the whole team for the job done, all the riders and staff. This is the first victory in my career and the first one in the season for the team. This is incredible. Thanks to the team for trusting me. It’s not the last one for sure.”

The race started similar to stage one, with three riders escaping the peloton, holding a four-minute advantage throughout the stage.

The peloton didn’t lose control of them and brought them back with 15km to spare and were intact at the bottom of the final climb. Amongst Bahrain Victorious’ other riders in stage two yesterday, Wright was 21st, German Jasha Sutterlin was 28th, Pole Filip Maciejuk was 31st, Italian Jonathan Milan was 34th, Pole Kamil Gradek was 68th, and Bahrain’s very own Ahmed Madan came 95th.