Santiago Buitrago: "The key to the stage win today was patience"

Santiago Buitrago has been one of the revelations of the season, and after a strong Giro d'Italia he has today put on a strong performance that has brought him his first Grand Tour stage win in Lavarone.

After Sunday's heartbreak in Cogne, where he crossed the line in tears having finished second behind Giulio Ciccone, he admitted that he didn't believe he could get a stage win in the race. “Certainly not after the big disappointment of my second place on Sunday," he said, however he was wrong as today he put on a stellar performance.

After getting the permission to get in the breakaway, he got himself in a position where he could fight for the stage win. Despite crashing as the attacks started in the front group, he got up, back into the chasing group and into the decisive moves over the final hours of racing.

In the final climb he attacked from the group lead by Jan Hirt and Hugh Carthy, and managed to bring back Mathieu van der Poel and Gijs Leemreize who had attacked earlier on. It was only in the final meters of the final climb that he managed to take the head of the race, but once he did the victory was in the pocket. "The key to the stage win today was patience. That was necessary on the final climb. I think I played it well," he said.

“This victory is for my family in Colombia and all the people who have supported me so far," he concluded. Buitrago's work is not yet done, as the team head into the 18th stage with third and sixth in the overall classification with Mikel Landa and Pello Bilbao respectively who will be ambitioning to keep or improve those results in the coming days.