Vuelta a La Rioja

Lasca (CJR) wins final rush in Logroño, with Sanz in 7th place; Movistar Team launches Valverde into break which gets wrongly led by the race motors 40k from the finish

Italian Francesco Lasca (CJR) claimed the victory in the 53rd Vuelta a La Rioja after a race incident saw the race stopped with 40k remaining, the only consistent attack of the race thus ruined as the expected mass sprint took placed after the 158-kilometer race in northern Spain. When it happened, fourteen riders -with Alejandro Valverde, Rubén Plaza, Vladimir Karpets and José Herrada from Movistar Team; Astarloza, Azanza and Lobato (EUS) plus seven Orica-GreenEdge riders- were keeping a fight with the bunch led by Caja Rural and Colombia, lying on the former’s side after more than 15k of full chase.

However, both the escapees and the bunch were misled into a road cross and the race was stopped to be restarted minutes later, the group back together –that’s the rules when the break’s gap is shorter than thirty seconds-. From that point, a flurry of attacks weren’t able to break organization into the group and Lasca would eventually win the sprint, with Enrique Sanz not finding a way and getting the 7th spot. Movistar Team could still step twice onto the podium, with José Herrada winning the KOM classification while Rubén Plaza claimed the Intermediate Sprints’ contest.