Bahrain Victorious’ Buitrago third overall, best young rider in Saudi Tour

TDT | Manama                      

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com   

Team Bahrain Victorious rider Santiago Buitrago from Colombia was yesterday third overall on the final general rankings of the Saudi Tour while also winning the white jersey for best young rider.

The five-stage event wrapped up yesterday with the 143km concluding leg.

Buitrago finished 24th in the stage but did enough to seal his final classification on the overall podium, where he joined winner Ruben Almeida Guerreiro of Movistar Team and Davide Formolo of UAE Team Emirates.

Teammate Jonathan Milan, who was the leader early in the tour, was fifth overall on the general ranking. Meanwhile, Buitrago was able to claim first place in the youth category, with Milan finishing right behind him.

Milan narrowly missed out on taking the red jersey for winning the points classification, where he finished second just six points behind Dylan Groenewegen of Team Jayco AlUla.

Bahrain Victorious’ seven-rider squad also missed out on a top-three finish in the teams category, going fourth amongst the 16 squads that participated.

The Saudi Tour is part of this year’s Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Asia circuit. Bahrain Victorious competed with seven riders. Bahraini Ahmed Madan was a part of the squad, as were Filip Maciejuk, Rainer Kepplinger, Andrea Pasqualon and Dusan Rajovic. Madan commented: “It’s a great atmosphere here to be racing in the Gulf, it’s like racing at home with all of the fans here.

I’m happy to be here, nice roads, nice racing.

“It’s been a great start to the season.

I’m super happy with how it went; the team has performed very well, and we have been on the podium almost every day.”