The Colombian Sergio Higuita, who won the fifth and penultimate stage of the Cycling Tour of the Basque Country on Friday, did not reach the podium after the final stage held this Saturday.
(You may be interested: Sergio Higuita and his hard confession: “I thought I would burst on every wall”)
The Colombian stayed in sixth place in the general classification of the race, 1′ 37″ behind the Tour de France champion, Jonas Vingegaard, who was crowned champion.
In the last stage, Higuita put up a fight and crossed the finish line of fifth, 49 seconds behind Jonas.
The Medellín rider signed his first victory of the season on Friday and took the sting out of second place in the recent GP Ind.
Vingegaard, champion
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) won his first Tour of the Basque Country on Saturday, winning the sixth and final stage in Eibar ahead of James Knox and Ion Izagirre.
For the Danish cyclist, this victory has a special symbolic value before the Tour de France, which will start in the Basque Country in less than three months. As in the third and fourth stages of this round, where he dominated the climbs of Hika and La Asturiana to end up winning the day, Vingegaard responded well on Saturday to a first attack from Izagirre, 30 kilometers from the end, and later he went solo, after having been followed at first by Enric Mas.
The champion of the last Tour de France finished the stage almost 50 seconds ahead of the chasing group. This is the second round won by Vingegaard since the start of the season, in three participations: first victory in the Tour of Galicia (O Gran Camiño) and then he was third in Paris-Nice, behind Tadej Pogacar and David Gaudu .
In the final overall, Vingegaard finished ahead of the Basques Mikel Landa (2nd at one minute and twelve seconds) and Ion Izagirre (3rd at one minute and 29 seconds).
The queen stage on Saturday was enlivened by a small group of escapees made up of Esteban ChavezRuben Guerreiro, Attila Valter and Steven Kruijswijk, who led part of the day before being overtaken by Vingegaard on the Izúa climb, the sixth and penultimate difficulty of the day.
The Dane had been second overall in this round in 2021 and debuts his name on the list of winners of it. Ion Izagirre, for his part, finished on the podium for the sixth time in the Tour of the Basque Country, thanks to the four bonus seconds achieved with his third place in the last stage. Vingegaard also got the green jersey (classification by points), while the mountain jersey went to Jon Barrenetxea (Caja Rural). The best junior was the American Brandon McNulty (UAE).
SPORTS AND AFP
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