Timo Roosen was escorted across the finish line by his Jumbo teammates Edoardo Affini and Cris Harper, who entered prominently
A speed bump half a kilometer from the finish line. Tons of pressure in the third relay, which Jumbo believes is definitive. The conviction in victory that is reinforced with a sip of oxygen, agonizing, relaxing arms to face without concessions a rushed ending. A few millimeters of misalignment in the line of the tubular guide, which has lost contact with the ground for an instant. And the sudden turn of the handlebar that ends up turning the flight to glory into a dead end mousetrap.
That is the shot that turned David Dekker into the origin of the domino effect that left the sprinters with a record in the Vuelta a Burgos out of the picture. The Dutchman collapsed on the asphalt when he was looking for victory, escorted by Timo Roosen, Edoardo Affini and Cris Harper, and opened an insurmountable gap between his teammates and the rest of a platoon that was rolling at a thousand and kept Guerreiro’s bullets in the chamber , Gaviria, Calmejane and above all Aberasturi, the only one involved in the montonera who managed to avoid disaster to achieve fourth place after the bitter triplet of the Dutch squad.
Race incident. There is no further explanation. Like football, cycling is also like that. It has these things. Success sometimes flirts with the debacle, which left a dozen cyclists on the Villadiego entrance, some bruised and with chafing all over their bodies, others with the doubt that their collarbone had not been broken. This Wednesday he did it by turning what was presumed to be the only sprint of the Castilian race into a closed preserve that catapulted Timo Roosen, after rolling at 41.449 kilometers per hour on the 158 that ran through the Burgos plateau and stopping the clock 3 hours, 48 minutes and 43 seconds later.
The teammates who disputed the victory of the stage, Affini and Harper, were granted, like the injured Dekker, the same time. Also to Aberasturi, the bet that the Trek team defended until the last and traumatic breath of a day that, however, gave much more of itself.
After all, the development of the test was built on a sequence shot that left the dispute of many other interests out of the picture. Secondary or punctual, but no less interesting.
Fundamentally the one that faced, as on the eve from the first kilometer, Mikel Azparren (Euskaltel), Jesús Ezquerra (Burgos) and Pablo Sevilla (Eolo-Kometa) in the fight for the leadership of the Mountain Award.
The platoon, which was on other things, let them do and gave them a five-minute lead so they could fight on the slopes that led to three third-class stops. Azparren overtook Sevilla in La Lora and left alone to take the points from Humada, where another Euskaltel appeared, Jon Bou, to relegate the Eolo runner to third place and deal the final blow in Amaya, where he had passed and his partner and buried the leadership of Seville scoring in second position and seeing how Ezkerra separated him from third. The Basque squad culminated its strategy and ordered Aizparren to temper bagpipes, once the climbers’ jersey was guaranteed for this Thursday.
Tao Geoghehan’s start on the last slope of the stage, testing the response capacity of Santiago Buitrago, who tied him hand and foot in the first person, was the last detail that was appreciated when traveling on the route of the journey. All the spotlights and cameras would end up focusing on an unfortunate pileup that will leave collateral damage on the starting list for this Thursday, the big day.
The Castilian round leaves from Quintana Martín Galíndez to reach Villarcayo. But among those 156 kilometers appears, well above three third-class ports (Cereceda, Retuerta and Bocos), the ascent to Picón Blanco, of special category.
