Abel Balderstone surprises favourites with victory amidst scenes of chaos at Spanish National Time Trial Championships

Caja Rural-Seguros RGA’s Abel Balderstone surprised the favourites in the Spanish National Time Trial Championships where reported problems with riders GPS trackers overshadowed the results and created a lengthy period of uncertainty before the winner was finally declared.

Defending champion David De La Cruz (Q36.5) finished second on the uphill time trial in Sierra Nevada, 22 seconds down, with another top favourite, Raúl García Pierna (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) in third, 25 seconds behind.

While the women’s time trial earlier in the day in the 14 kilometre ascent had taken place without major incidents, the men’s race was overshadowed by complications with riders’ tracking devices.

Confusion certainly predominated during the race as commentators on the Youtube channel showing the event grew increasingly uncertain about what was going on. Then after all the riders had finished, with riders demanding to know their times and standing waiting at the line until a clear winner emerged.

“We only know that we’ve come up here at full gas, after that it’s a mystery,” García Pierna told MARCA. while U23 World Champion Ivan Romeo roundly denounced the situation as “Shameful.”

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“This is shameful, it’s a Spanish National Championships, we’ve been here [at the finish] for 40 minutes and we’ve not even eaten anything at all.”

“This just can’t be. They complain that riders don’t come to the Championships, but there’s a week to go to the Tour and I could be at altitude. Situations like this don’t exactly boost your enthusiasm to take part.”

“We had a time reference that Romeo was the best time with 30:04, then García Pierna got 29:52 and I got 29:49,” De La Cruz added. “But “Then they [the race officials] said they had made a mistake and they’d taken off a minute from the time they’d originally gave him. We’ve come up here and we don’t know anything.”

One standout name, Tour Down Under stage winner Javier Romo (Movistar) had to abandon mid-event, reportedly because of heat stroke, whilst another, Juanpe López (Lidl-Trek) was a DNS.

As the favourites struggled, Balderstone, meanwhile, a winner last year in the daunting summit finish of Monte Caro in the Clásica Terres de L’Ebre one-day race, could use his climbing skills to claim to the biggest, if rather unexpected, victory of his career.

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