{"id":314060,"date":"2025-08-03T08:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T08:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/314060\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T08:26:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T08:26:12","slug":"we-tried-everything-and-we-almost-won-jan-christen-second-as-giulio-ciccone-denies-uae-in-san-sebastian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/314060\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe tried everything and we almost won\u201d \u2013 Jan Christen second as Giulio Ciccone denies UAE in San Sebasti\u00e1n"},"content":{"rendered":"

UAE Team Emirates – XRG<\/a> fell just short of another win in
\ntheir dominant 2025 season, coming away with second place at Clasica San
\nSebasti\u00e1n. The team, already boasting 68 victories this year, couldn\u2019t add a
\n69th as Giulio Ciccone of Lidl-Trek stormed to victory for Italy. UAE threw
\neverything at the race with a deep lineup that included Jan Christen<\/a>, Isaac del
\nToro, and Juan Ayuso, but it was Ciccone who had the final say on the punishing
\nMurgil Tontorra climb.<\/p>\n

Del Toro and Christen remained active deep into the race,
\nwith Christen making a decisive move from the chasing group on the final
\nascent. Ayuso had already been distanced earlier, bad news for fans of the
\nSpaniard ahead of the Vuelta later this month.<\/p>\n

Christen’s attack briefly looked like it could reel in
\nCiccone, but the Italian proved too strong, launching a solo move that stuck to
\nthe line. Christen settled for second, crossing nine seconds behind.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a hard race, Giulio was super strong. We tried
\neverything and we almost won,\u201d Christen said in the team\u2019s post-race press
\nrelease. \u201cOn the final steep climb I felt good and could go across to Isaac and
\nI tried to jump directly to try and surprise Ciccone and maybe set up a 1-2
\nwith Isaac but he wasn\u2019t feeling too good at that point. Ciccone kept the
\npressure on until the finish so congrats to him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UAE Team Emirates – XRG fell just short of another win in their dominant 2025 season, coming away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-314060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114963886254839672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}