The best José Antonio García of the season emerges with a great performance at the Circuito de Getxo
74th Circuito de Getxo
Getxo-Getxo (196 km)
The leap from the amateur field to professionalism is not always easy and does not take place in the same way in all runners. One of the new faces of the Kometa Cycling Team for this season was that of José Antonio García. The Granadino, from the under23 team of the Alberto Contador Foundation, is a rider with a great speed tip that passes well in the middle mountain. In his nineteenth day of competition of this his first year, this Wednesday day of San Ignacio, the Andalusian completed his best race with a fourteenth place in a Circuito de Getxo where he was one of the great protagonists. García finished 22 seconds behind Alava’s Jon Aberasturi (Caja Rural), who ultimately won the race.
Joselillo faced the last climb to the wall of Txomintxu between the four cyclists who led the last kilometers of this edition of the getxotarra race. García rode together with Winner Anacona (Movistar), Fernando Barceló (Euskadi-Murias) and Sergei Chernetskii (Caja Rural), with whom he managed to stand out within the last five kilometres of a larger group of eleven units that had just been gobbled up by a larger group where the Kometa Cycling Team, very active throughout the day, worked hard to put its Stefano Oldani rider in front again.
That numerous escape of eleven riders was the last great movement within the dynamic of attacks that developed from the equator of the test. Until that half, in the first four laps of the new circuit proposed by the organization, the protagonism had fallen in four riders (Jorge Cubero, Burgos-BH; Jokin Aranburu, Euskadi Foundation; the Frenchman Lucas de Rossi, Delko-Marseille, and the American Austin Stephens, 303 Project). A phase of the Getxo Circuit in which you could see a Kometa Cycling Team riding very close together. Once hunted, multiple were the skirmishes that took place. Among them, the acceleration of seven units where were included, on the part of the Kometa, both Diego Pablo Sevilla and Stefano Oldani.
García, after another movement where Juan Camacho and he were present, took the offensive relay within the continental formation of Madrid, integrating himself in a breakaway of seven riders, later eight, in which he showed gallons and ambition. The Spaniard, in fact, started the last lap of the circuit at the head of the race, starring in an acceleration at the pace under the banner that led him to lead the race for a few kilometers with a few seconds advantage.
Back, once chased by its pursuers, the Kometa Cycling Team set to work at the front of the pack in order to stimulate Oldani’s options in the final uphill. “It was a crazy race with a lot of starts,” says Stefano Oldani. “I think, as a block, you can see, you can see, you can see that we have a level above what we had last year. It was a pity not to be able to finish all this work, but I think we have run very well”, completes Diego Pablo Sevilla. “It was a very crazy race. Both Olda and I were on a break in the middle of the race, wherever you want or don’t spend strength. And then we managed a moment of decontrol until we got organized and put Oldani in front again. Later the cut went with Joselillo, which was good for us, but back they threw a block and caught them on the steep slope”.
“It’s about time,” smiles José Antonio García in the finish area. “We’ve all run very well, we’ve had a good race. Facing the first breakaway, where we didn’t put anyone, we ran very close together, going out to the cuts. In the middle of the race we managed to catch a leak both Juan and me, but that leak was selected. I tried to be there whenever there was a selection. For the final lap I was left alone. It was complicated and more riders ended up coming from behind, but we left four riders and it was a time to ride hard, go to relays and try to hold on for as long as possible. In the end we were caught at the bottom, on the steep slope, but we had a very good race and we are confident that we will do just as well in Burgos”. The one from Fuente Vaqueros is 23 years old: “Yes, it has been a complicated adaptation and I was sick several times… It hasn’t been easy, but these are situations that we had to live, assimilate and keep working”.
To Garcia’s fourteenth place is added Isaac Canton’s eighteenth and Oldani’s twenty-fourth, both at 24 seconds.
“We are very satisfied with this edition of the Getxo Circuit, because the team has improved its performance a lot compared to last year and this confirms that there is a maturity and an evolution. We came with the firm intention of being protagonists and we have been with presence in several escapes thanks to Stefano Oldani or Diego Pablo Sevilla and the great performance of José Antonio García in the great breakaway of the day and that final movement where he rolled at the head of the race until the final steep. The boys have been very good in defending the interests of Stefano Oldani, who was our main asset in the face of a final that could go well. This week’s two classics in the Basque Country reinforce all the work that is being done and in a few days we face the Vuelta a Burgos with an even more special motivation”, explains Jesús Hernández, director of the Kometa Cycling Team.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
? Mertxe Labrador
