Brilliant Santiago Buitrago leads home Pello Bilbao in Bahrain - Victorious one-two on brutal stage 2 of the 2025 Volta a Comunitat Valenciana

On a brutally steep final climb, Santiago Buitrago has survived to take victory on stage 2 of the 2025 Volta a Comunitat Valenciana ahead of his Bahrain - Victorious teammate Pello Bilbao and Joao Almeida.

With a day highlighted by increasingly challenging climbs in the final 50km, just five riders attempted to get themselves up the road. Notable names in the day's break included Samuele Zoccarato of Team Polti VisitMalta and Matyas Kopecky of Team Novo Nordisk, with the former of those mentioned also being the best placed in GC from the group at the start of the day. 

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On the climb of the Coll de Rates, the breakaway began to split apart, with only the aforementioned Kopecky and Burgos Burpellet BH's Sinuhé Fernández able to keep clear of the peloton as the descent began. At 24km to go though, they too had been caught and the GC fight was preparing to begin in earnest on the final two categorised climbs of the day. 

The next attack to get a clear gap, came from the INEOS Grenadiers and former time trial world champion Tobias Foss. With the chase behind stalling initially, UAE Team Emirates - XRG decided to try and bridge the gap to Foss by launching attacks and counter attacks one after the other, by the likes of Pavel Sivakov, Joao Almeida and Brandon McNulty. By the top of the penultimate climb though, Foss remained a lone leader, dangling between 10-20 seconds ahead of an ever-dwindling chase group.

Following the climb there was no real respite for the Norwegian though, as, after less than two kilometres of false flat, the road sharply turned upwards again for the final climb of the day to the Cat 1 Alto Partegat. Not long after the climb to the line began, Foss was joined in the lead by a two-man counter of Pello Bilbao and Ivan Romeo. At 5km to go, their advantage over the UAE-led chase was over half a minute. At just over 3km to go, Foss began to struggle, leaving Bilbao and Romeo clear at the head of the race. 

Despite the work done by UAE behind though, race leader Mathias Vacek was looking incredibly composed, sitting comfortably in the wheels of the chase group, still around 15 seconds down as they reached 2km to go. With the road continue to only rise towards the line, Pello Bilbao had gone solo at the front and with 1.5km to go, an acceleration in the chase by Almeida looked to have finally distanced Vacek and the Yellow Jersey, with the Portuguese bringing Santiago Buitrago and Jefferson Alveiro Cepeda with him in the hunt of Bilbao. 

Sensing Almeida tiring, Buitrago attacked inside the final 1km, linking up with Bahrain - Victorious teammate Bilbao at 500m to go. In truth though, the climb was so steep there was nothing teammates could really do for each other and soon, Buitrago was solo himself in the lead, taking the win ahead of Bilbao and Almeida.

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