Jan Christen's older brother reacts to a breakthrough victory at Vuelta a Murcia: "I knew I had it in me to win since last year"
Cycling
Today's Vuelta a Murcia saw another display of collective strength of UAE Team Emirates, XDS Astana and Decathlon AG2R whose fireworks made for an exciting race. However in the end, it was neither of these three teams to celebrate in Murcia as Q36.5 Pro Cycling's Fabio Christen stormed towards a victory with a powerful sprint.
"My team did a great job towards the last climb. I really struggled to follow the rest," he reflected on Eurosport. "It was a difficult situation after that, because I was outnumbered. So I had to be smart. I saw my moment and luckily I was able to hold on until the line. I knew I had to go from far. In the last meters I thought I wasn’t going to make it anymore, because my legs were really hurting."
And so Christen achieved his first victory as a pro. Make no mistake, the older brother of UAE supertalent Jan Christen has been knocking on the doors of this success for a while now. Just last year, Fabio finished in the top-10 eleven times!
"I've been waiting for this for a long time, this means a lot to me," he says. "I knew I had it in me to win, last year already. I was so close so many times. But my approach worked, finally. I'm very happy that I took a step this winter and I'm looking forward to the rest of the season."
Christen's victory marks a fifth individual victory for Q36.5 Pro Cycling in 2025. Still in mid-February, it is the same amount of victories the Swiss team gathered across whole previous season. Seemingly, the star signing of Tom Pidcock, who racked up three of these triumphs at AlUla Tour, launched the team lead by Doug Ryder to new heights and we're yet to see where are their limits now that they've finally found their much desired leader.
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- Too much amatuer psychology. How about this: "he was never as good as when he had not suffered multiple career-threatening injuries." What is happening to him is what happened to Alaphilippe, Bernal, and others. You will notice that his two major peers -- MVDP and Mads - are both at their all time best. You will also note that neither is coming off of anything like the same last 18 months that Wout is. Go back to 2022, then roll the tape forward with Wout remaining healhty and one of them having had multiple traumatic falls. Odds are good he'd be at his dominant best and they would not.MidnightRider31-03-2025
- 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