National Championships

Basque youngster gets second place at Béjar's Nationals, Belarusian wins home ITT championship and increases the Blues' victory account of the year to 21, the same from the 2011 season.

Movistar Team keeps earning victories and equalled their account of the 2011 season thanks to the victory by Branislau Samoilau on the Belarusian ITT championships held in Grodno on Friday. Samoilau outclassed Krasilnikau (CDT) and Tikhonov (BLR) at the end of the 35-kilometer course to claim his third title after the ones taken in 2009 and 2010. The win by the Eastern rider takes the Blue counter to 21 with more than three months of racing still to come.

Also in Spain, Movistar Team came onto the podium of the time trial course in Béjar with the silver medal by Jonathan Castroviejo in the Spanish Championships, over a demanding, 42k course. The rider from Getxo repeated his runner-up position from last year behind last year’s winner and three-time champion Luis León Sánchez (RAB), who took a great first half to fruition to overtake Castroviejo by more than a minute, who improved in the second half to only lose 20 more seconds. Iván Gutiérrez, Jesús Herrada and Juanjo Cobo concluded in 5th, 6th and 10th place respectively, all of them within a minute behind Castroviejo.

Ignatas Konovalovas will ride the Lithuanian Championships (35km) in Siauliai this evening.