Fabio Christen takes stunning upset win to continue Q36.5's successful start to 2025 at Vuelta a Murcia
Cycling
The Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team continues to boom in 2025! Fabio Christen has denied the big names to take victory at the 2025 Vuelta a Murcia from an elite-reduced bunch sprint.
The race started with several attacks that didn't manage to cause real splits. The big move happened 180 km from the finish line, on the climb to the Alto El Portazgo. Four riders launched an attack, and quickly formed the breakaway. Joel Francisco Peñuela (Caja Rural), Samuel Fernández (Caja Rural), José Luis Faura (Burgos Burpellet BH), José María García (Illes Balears Arabay) and Filippo D'Aiuto (Petrolike) quickly took 2 and a half minutes from the peloton.
The break's biggest lead over the peloton came with 142 km to go, when the five escapees were 3:45 clear of the main bunch. However, they were soon to suffer the consequences of the tough mountain course. With 102 km to go, just before the climb to the Alto Collado Bermejo, the gap had been reduced to almost 2 minutes. As expected, the climb to the Alto Collado Bermejo destroyed the breakaway. Isaac del Toro took advantage of this to attack from the peloton. That move by the Mexican completely revolutionised the race.
Heading into the final 30km though, it was Del Toro's teammate, Tim Wellens who was off the front, part of a four-man group around 50 seconds clear of the peloton alongside Clement Berthet, Simone Velasco and Eric Antonio Fagúndez. As soon as the day's final climb began, Wellens attacked his companions, going clear solo, but the peloton was breathing down the neck of the Belgian. Just before the summit of the climb, a counter attack from Christan Scaroni gave Wellens some company at the front.
The duo's time at the front didn't last too long though, and at 7km to go, Wellens and Scaroni had been caught by the chase group. UAE Team Emirates - XRG and the XDS Astana Team both had strong numbers in the group and were repeatedly attempting to launch attacks. At 3km to go, the 10-man group was still together though. As such, it was a reduced sprint that decided things and in the fight for the line, it was Fabio Christen who upset the big names to take a brilliant win.
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- Raymond Poulidor, Alfredo Binda.... where do we stop. If you want to retitle it is Primoz Roglic the bestr rider never to win the tour in the last ten or 20 years then that might be betterslappers6631-03-2025
- Let me help you. Alfredo BindaUpHill31-03-2025
- He'll certainly last it and prob ride his own race, at the front 😁
leedorney31-03-2025 - Gaio Primus Caesar Roglus, Rome is waiting for you, Imperator :-)).
maria2024202431-03-2025 - And he probably wasn’t even at the limit ;-) Have to wonder how much Mads could catch up if he’d tune his physique to be as sharp as MVDPs’Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- Respect for giving Van Eetvelt credit there.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- He’s already a star for me for HAVING complained about it, the recent trend having been, let them then try to take advantage by making them sign NDAs ;-)Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- Agreed, but if it was a radio thing then all the riders should have the same story and it would be easy to call anyone out. Kind of surprised this isn’t cleared up half officially afterwards, just like the Alaphilippe divorce, seems like once something spreads on the net it kind of gets accepted that everyone wants to have their own truth so no-one bothers to contest anything that’s verifiable anymore, we all just move on.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- maybe. what makes that a LITTLE fishy is that they suddenly hit the gas and started hammering it. even mathieu, who i’ve never heard complain about ANYTHING (other than teenage girls waking him up and being spit on by belgians) was pretty hacked off about the race tactics after the split. i think he was upset for what his teammates had to do, not for the fact he ended up isolated as a result.OCexile31-03-2025
- It seems that in E3 it wasn’t legit to criticise teams that « took advantage » because there was no radio communication about the incident so they couldn’t know to slow down. Only one source so far but should be quite easy to verify.Mistermaumau31-03-2025