Twenty meters short for a double in Palma
06 February 2011

<!-- p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; line-height: 20.0px; font: 17.0px Times; color: #515559} span.s1 {letter-spacing: 0.0px} --> Movistar Team was really close to increase their victory count in the recently started season. Fran Ventoso and José Joaquín Rojas came up just a bit short for the victory in the Trofeo Palma, the opening race of the Challenge de Mallorca over a 116-km urban course in the Balearic capital city.

The two sprinters from the Spanish squad were only beaten by the day’s winner, Tyler Farrar (Garmin), in the closing meters of the mass sprint which decided the race. “I thought we were going for a 1-2,” Ventoso recognized over the finishing line. “Maybe we went a bit early on the sprint, but you never know hot to get right and this is better than getting boxed in. It worked well in Australia and we were close to do it again today. The important thing is that Movistar Team is making a great group, the team protecting us to perfection in the three final laps, and I get really well on with Rojas. It was the worst day for us and we were there at the end, so I think we’re gonna get chances this week.”

The race was marked by a protest from all teams towards the unilateral ban by the Union Cycliste Internationale of the radio use, which caused the race not being directed by the official jury since the riders decided to race with their radios on. Movistar Team’s general manager Eusebio Unzué got into greater detail with the reasons for the protest: “It may seem like there was time to negotiate and this wasn’t the good place, but I can say we really tried by all ways to communicate and there wasn’t any response. We’re making a great effort to make people behind these decisions seeing this is not a whim, but a real need. This is an indispensable tool for our daily work and we teams must fight for it. Apart from other kind of comment on this, I think it’s a measure that dramatically multiplies the risk to any problem, and it’s something that, it we don’t get to work, will lead to troubles soon.”