“I was on Remco’s wheel and tried to follow, but he just kept pushing” – Antonio Tiberi pushed to the limit as Valenciana stage finale turns tense

Antonio Tiberi left the finish of Stage 4 at the Volta a Comunitat Valenciana with a result that reflected both ambition and limits. Fourth on the stage after an aggressive finale, the Italian had briefly looked like the last rider capable of following Remco Evenepoel when the decisive attack was launched on Cumbre del Sol, before being forced to concede ground as the pace continued to rise.

“I was on Remco’s wheel, and when he went, I tried to follow,” Tiberi recalled to Cycling Pro Net after the finish. “For the first two or three hundred metres I was there, but he just kept pushing really hard.”

The Red Bull acceleration was immediate and sustained. While Tiberi initially held contact, the effort required to do so quickly took its toll.

“He kept pushing, and I dropped a bit,” he explained. “I saw behind that there were some gaps, so I tried to keep going, but then the small group behind came back, and we were there together in the end.”

Tiberi’s account places his decisive effort earlier than the moment the chasing group eventually formed. Rather than sitting on from the outset, the Bahrain - Victorious rider committed to the acceleration as it happened, only regrouping once the elastic finally snapped.

“When we started the last climb, I saw that Red Bull were doing a really strong tempo,” he said. “It was clear it was for an attack. I was in position, I tried, and then I had to adjust.”

That sequence would later become part of the post-stage discussion, after Joao Almeida suggested that greater cooperation behind might have brought Evenepoel back, adding that Tiberi appeared to be saving his legs.

Tiberi did not address that remark directly, but his description of the effort paints a picture of a rider already on the limit by the time the chase properly formed.

Despite the difficulty of the move, there was a brief moment when the chase group believed the gap might still be manageable. “At one moment, he was maybe ten seconds in front, three hundred metres or so,” Tiberi said. “We spoke to each other and said: Come on, let’s try.”

That optimism was short lived. “He went again really fast, and suddenly it was twenty or thirty seconds,” he added. “It was just very, very fast.”

With Evenepoel riding clear and the time gap stabilising, the focus shifted to salvaging the best possible result from what remained.

In a finale shaped by explosive gradients and relentless pacing, Tiberi’s day ultimately became defined by that initial decision to commit. In the context of the broader debate that followed, his account adds crucial nuance: not a rider waiting, but one who reached his limit early, and paid for it later.