Rodrigo Contreras hopes to hold off World Tour and Richard Carapaz in the last stage of the Tour Colombia: "It's hard, but we're going all out, we're going to hold on"

Rodrigo Contreras made yesterday an epic exercise of survival and held on to the lead of the classification of the Tour Colombia despite the large number of attacks made by an unstoppable Richard Carapaz who ended up taking the stage. The overall and Nu Colombia team leader only lost 17 seconds to the Ecuadorian and finished third ahead of WorldTour riders like Egan Bernal, Rigoberto Urán, Iván Sosa and Esteban Chaves.

After the day's he commented the following: "It was a very complicated stage, but I felt very good, calm, with the team at the height, we controlled from start to finish, imposing ourselves from the beginning, a Colombian style stage and thank God we have the strength. We knew there were going to be many attacks but I was able to withstand them, suffer and here we are still leaders."

Contreras will face the last stage of the Tour Colombia with 17 seconds of advantage with respect to Richard Carapaz and 24 on the also Ecuadorian Jonathan Caicedo who also took some seconds from him yesterday. In spite of the fact that the stage also ends in a high point he hopes to win the general classification. This could be an historic victory for the 29-year old who didn't find his step at the World Tour with Astana a few years back.

Now after Alejandro Osorio, Contreras looks to be the next figure of Colombian cycling as he comes close to beating strong World Tour competitors who have remained in South America to start their season in familiar terrain. "It's tough, tomorrow everyone wants to attack, but we're going all out, we have the best team and we're going to hold our own," he concludes.