Valverde returns to the top in Valencia
Between Alejandro Valverde’s 2017 seasonending crash on stage 1 of the Tour de France and his fifth day of racing on his comeback at the start of this season, Movistar added just two race wins to their season total of 31. But on stage 2 of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, seven months since the 37-year-old crashed out in France, the Murcian righted the team ship with a sprint win tacked on to the back of a 30km escape. It was his first win since Liège last April. Two days later, following the weather-neutered TTT, the veteran won the summit finish on the very steep 5km Cocentaina climb. Valverde’s oft-quoted remarks over the winter that he felt stronger than ever proved anything but a bluff, and the withering effects of age are yet to take hold. The victory on stage 2 was classic Valverde fare. For most of the Alto del Garbí climb – where Alberto Contador played merry havoc with Chris Froome on day six of last year’s Vuelta a España – four Sky riders led a 25-strong group at the front of the race. The tempo must have been a notch below fierce however, because Astana’s Jakob Fuglsang prised open a gap 4km from the summit.
The Dane was joined shortly by Valverde, whose sharp acceleration almost catapulted him past the Astana rider. Nevertheless, the pair started working smoothly and a few kilometres later, on the descent towards Albuixech, they were joined by the rangy figure of Astana’s Luis León Sánchez.
It created a compelling dynamic: Sánchez was Fuglsang’s team-mate. He is also a long-time friend of Valverde and the pair both come from Murcia. Unsurprisingly, the trio collaborated smoothly for the thick end of 30km into a crossheadwind, while behind, Sky’s dwindling energy levels let the gap go out to an unclosable 30 seconds.
Sánchez has a good sprint and is usually a wily operator in small breakaway circumstances – his four Tour stage wins were all forged on tactical smarts. But here, Astana opted to ride solely for GC advantage, so the Astana men towed Valverde into the finishing straight and he easily won the sprint. Not that Sánchez looked too bothered: his broad grin features in all the finish line photos.
The extreme weather protocol was invoked for the team time trial, meaning the 23.2km stage would go ahead but the times not count to the final GC. BMC won, Astana also put their backs into it and finished in second, while Movistar took it easy and came in 2:31 down on the US squad, in a notional 11th place.
Valverde’s win at Cocentaina on stage 4 – a 181km stage with six classified climbs (one of which was climbed twice) - was a more obvious confirmation of his return to full strength. Sky’s rare departure from their usual stultifying tactics – they actually put Vasil Kiryienka in the day’s breakaway to assist Micha¯ Kwiatkowski later – ran out of puff before the final climb had properly started. Mitchelton-Scott’s Adam
Yates attacked hard three times in the final two kilometres, too, on gradients in the high teens.
But short steep climbs are Valverde’s bread and butter and he easily passed the Mitchelton-Scott rider in the final metres. The last stage ended in a bunch sprint that did little to trouble Valverde’s overall lead, and by the race’s end, the top three on GC was the order of arrival on stage three.
Valverde added his third Valenciana GC win to his palmarès and normal service had resumed. Valverde’s rivals in the hilly Classics have been served notice that he is
on race-winning form.