Antonio Morgado wins Gran Premio Castellon with a brilliant performance by Portuguese UAE Team Emirates - XRG rider
Cycling
The Gran Premio Castellón arrived as the second Spanish classic of 2025. A day after the Camp de Morvedre, which was won by Urko Berrade, a peloton with more prominent names was looking for the victory.
The challenge was not expected to be too demanding. The race organizer himself, in statements to CiclismoAlDía, told us that they had decided not to make the GP Castellón too hard because at this early stage of the year it is what attracts more and better cyclists.
With this, it could already be foreseen that the final would be decided in a sprint. However, even though the peloton tried until the last moment, the victory went to Antonio Morgado, from UAE Team Emirates XRG. The young Portuguese pearl withstood the onslaught of the main group after getting into a group of 6 that attacked at the end of the Collado de Ayódar pass.
As for the race itself, the Gran Premio Castellón started with an early crash for Movistar Team's Lorenzo Milesi. The Italian went to the ground along with Torstein Traeen (Bahrain Victorious). Simultaneously, Carlos García Pierna entered the scene to form the breakaway of the day with 160 km to go.
Little by little, the breakaway was gaining more members, and ended up consolidating to 8 riders at 125 km to the finish with Pierna himself among them. With 100 km to go, the advantage was extended to over 2 minutes.
The breakaway held a 2-minute lead for many kilometers. At 60 km to the finish was when for the first time fell below that figure. The peloton was at 1 minute and 58 seconds. Not much changed, but the main group knew it had completely dominated the race.
The race entered its final 50 kilometers with the peloton riding at a very steady pace. As a result, the gap continued to narrow, at that moment to 1 minute and 40 seconds. It seemed that in the pass of Collado de Ayódar, before the finish, the 8 escapees were going to be neutralized.
However, the excessive relaxation of the peloton caused the breakaway's lead to rise again to 2 minutes and 15 seconds with 40 km to go. But nothing really worrying. Despite gaining that time, the breakaway lost a member, Sergio Trueba, just 1 km later.
With 34 km to go there was a crash in the peloton involving Antonio Pedrero. He was the second Movistar Team rider of the day to crash. Fortunately, there were no serious consequences and everyone involved was able to continue.
At the front of the peloton, the 30 km to go sign activated the legs of all of them. The lead was quickly reduced again to 1 minute and 40 seconds. Before the first pass over the finish line, at 20 km, the breakaway was practically weakened, with only 34 seconds ahead.
The sentence for the escapees, where Carlos García Pierna held on until almost the last moment, came at the start of the Collado de Ayódar pass, 15 km from the finish line. This opened the possibility of attacks by riders like Matej Mohoric in search of victory.
In the final kilometer of the climb, the tension was at its peak. Torstein Traeen went to the ground when he was in the lead. UAE Team Emirates' Alessandro Covi was trying with 10 km to go. He was joined by five riders, including Movistar Team's Davide Formolo, and was 10 seconds behind the peloton on the descent. The other riders were Antonio Morgado, Clement Champoussin, Christian Scaroni and Eric Antonio Fagúndez.
With 5 km to go, the gap between that group and the peloton was 18 seconds. Everything was wide open. Although the peloton pressed until the end, Antonio Morgado made a spectacular performance in the last kilometers. Accelerating in the final kilometer, he managed to get enough of an advantage so that neither the peloton nor the rest of the group that followed him could catch him.
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UltimateOpportunist11-02-2025 - Tadej is in his grand tour years, we might see him win two a year for the next three years, if he can achieve that he will win all three at some point, this will cement him as the best pro cyclist of all time, winning like this in the modern era. It's a big ask but he can do it, he's shown he has what it takes.awp11-02-2025
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James2631810-02-2025 - And I believe that Pogacar will dominate Flandersvappaxbipmv10-02-2025
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- Everything else is unimportant except the money. He may not achieve a GT win but he will get the moneyabstractengineer10-02-2025
- It has deteriorated in the same fashion many things do, first the US, then UK, then some large EU countries, then it generalises world-wide, screen content probably plays some responsibility as does the ratio of individualism towards collectivism. But, it wouldn’t be a problem if all these authorities would learn to adapt. They do, slowly in many domains like drug smuggling (studying traffickers psychology) but not in others like child abuse (refusing to focus on more likely perpetrators) and unfortunately, public safety has never been a priority (except short-term symbolically after big accidents, terrorist attacks, etc.) and cycling races are considered a low ranking level of public safety, hardly surprising as mediatically any accident is easy to blame on someone else because it’s quite easy to manipulate a storyline when the media itself is not interested in getting to the bottom of things.Mistermaumau10-02-2025