British rider Adam
Yates has won the fourth stage of the 70th edition of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, or Tour of Valencia.
Stage four was over 188kms from Villa
Real to Alcala-Alcocebre and had Edvald Boasson-Hagen in the leader’s jersey.
Duval of AG2R, Carpenter of Rally and Goikoetxea of Euskadi were the
first to break, only to be caught after twenty-five kilometres.
Dillier, Rodriques and Rubio the KOM leader then got away and too a lead
of 3.50.
Rubio took the climb at Culla points and those on the category two La
Bandereta with Dillier taking the sprint at Benlloch and the climb points at La
Serretella.
With 35kms left, Dillier and Rodriques had a lead of 4.30 but the peloton
started to work and they were caught with three kilometres to go.
The attacks started but with 1.5kms remaining, Adam Yates took the the
final climb of Ermita Santa Lucia which had gradients of up to 20%.
Inside the final five hundred metres and Adam Yates pushed away to take
the win in 4.54.57 just ahead of the World Champion Alejandro Valverde of
Movistar and two seconds ahead of Pello Bilbao of Astana.
Ion Izaguirre of Astana moved up into the leader’s yellow jersey and
leads by seven seconds from Valverde going into the final stage.
Yates was delighted with his stage win and told the Mitchelton-Scott
press office: “We
wanted it all to come together for the finish and for the break not to stay
away. Dimension-Data actually did a pretty good job of controlling the break
and it was only in the final we had to put some guys at front to close the gap.
“The run in was always tricky, I’ve done it before at the Vuelta a
España so I knew how tricky it was. I knew how steep the climb was and I just
had to pace my effort and that’s what I did.
“It feels good, I’ve had a really good off-season, I’ve been really
consistent with my training and doing everything correct and it just goes to
show when you commit like that everything comes together so it is a really good
feeling.”
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