Santiago Buitrago confides to mixed emotions after beating teammate Pello Bilbao: "It always leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth when you pass a teammate"
Cycling
Santiago Buitrago has entered the fight for the final overall classification of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana after his victory in the second stage. The Colombian rider of Bahrain - Victorious is now placed third, only 5 seconds behind leader Mathias Vacek and 3 seconds behind Joao Almeida.
Clearly hurt by the team time trial, the Bahrain leaders have bounced back and now enter the fight for top positions with both Buitrago and Pello Bilbao, who was second behind his teammate and is now ranked fourth, 18 seconds behind the GC leader. After the race, Buitrago talked about his feelings on the bike.
"Starting the season with a victory is amazing," Buitrago said in a press communication afterwards. "I’m super happy because this win is really important for me and for the team. It’s our first of the season, and that makes it even more special. The whole team put in an incredible effort, and I’m proud of the work everyone did today. This result gives us confidence for the rest of the season."
There were plenty of attacks in the final of the stage, but the two Bahrain captains managed to navigate through the chaos safely, and regained their ground in the GC. "I didn't know how to act, I saw that we were getting closer to Pello, we knew we were 24, 25 seconds behind UAE and nothing... I just tried to get the biggest gap possible."
"To be honest, it always leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth when you pass a teammate but here we support each other and when one wins, we all win. It's unfortunate that we were so close to take the overall lead, but there are still three stages left."
Despite the promising position in the GC, Buitrago still doesn't see himself as the favorite and remains calm with view to tomorrow's stage which might be even more chaotic: "It's a race where there are two, three very aggressive days left and we know that Trek is a very strong team, just like their leader," he concludes.
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- Obviously the questions are more important to some here than to them or the team so I suggest looking for answers instead of asking questions between ourselves. We’ll probably get them unless someone actually goes to ask the protagonists themselves. Here are some starters : They like riding together; they have their own rivalry that helps bring out the best in both; they might get more points helping each other compared to racing separate races. In any case, unless we hear MJ complaining about it, I don’t think it’s going to change, it’s the Sepp Kuss syndrome all over again, fans lobbying against the will of the rider.Mistermaumau23-03-2025
- Mine goes to MVDP for entertaining us all year round :-) Stellar race, Ganna impressive in his own way as many predicted after some oddly lacklustre times.Mistermaumau23-03-2025
- i remember when not too long ago mathieu was regarded as a real tactical knucklehead. i’m not sure that was ever quite accurate, but it’s certainly the case that over the years he has become a real master tactician. in the biggest races, van der poel rarely makes choices that don’t fully optimize every specific advantage he has.OCexile23-03-2025
- Whatever the result, I believe the strategy by UAE to launch Pogacar was absolutely the right one. Unfortunately, they just were not able to execute it the way they must have planned, being all over the place at the start of the Cipressa.Cooldude23-03-2025
- They are without doubt not just the best two classics riders of this generation, but amongst the best of all time. MvdP is more suited to MSR and PR (which Pog has yet to race), while Pog is now almost untouchable at LBL and Lombardia. RVV is the only one where both basically have an equal chance to win.Cooldude23-03-2025
- bravissima!
maria2024202423-03-2025 - According to Tadej's Strava upload, he went up the Cipressa at an average speed of 37.6kph. Rocket ship! He did the 5.63km verified 'Cipressa' Strava segment in 8:59 minutes, which has a 4.3% average grade and total elevation gain of 229m. Naturally, he got the Strava KOM.Pogboom23-03-2025
- In Track and Field, there's Usain Bolt in the sprints and Kenya's Kipchoge in the marathon. Though Bolt can quite easily beat Kipchoge in the 100m dash, he probably won't even finish a marathon. Tadej won't beat Mathieu in a sprint, yet he wins the TDF while MVDP languishes in 50th place. Both are great champions in their respective fields, but my admiration goes to Tadej for trying.FredMan23-03-2025
- They went into the race as co-leaders!frieders323-03-2025
- He can win that sprint if he plays it right but leaving tha gap was ridiculous ! A spring after 6+ hours isn't a guarantee for MVDPfrieders323-03-2025