A REALLY PROMISING 2021. Gonzalo Serrano left a really good impression in his WorldTour debut season. Other than his fantastic win – and race lead – in the Vuelta a Andalucía, the Madrilian looked for most of the season like he could excel at almost every terrain. 2nd atop the Alto del Castillo on stage one of the Vuelta a Burgos; 3rd, against Van Aert and Hayter, in the opening day of the Tour of Britain; 4th at the Spanish road race championships; quite consistent in the Tour de Suisse… Even if he likes classics most, any race -even some kind of stageraces- can suit him well, last season making him become one of Spain’s hottest names.

STEP BY STEP. The Caja Rural – Seguros RGA outfit supported Gonzalo through his first three years in the UCI ProTeam category, the Spaniard following a fine, solid line of progression. A consistent 2018 season led to his first good results in 2019 -8th overall in the Tour of Turkey; 6th at the tough Castillo finish in the Vuelta a Burgos- and, ultimately, his first pro win in 2020. He claimed stage two of the Vuelta a Andalucía by beating all fast finishers at a difficult slope in Iznájar, with a late attack he had already tried two weeks before at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. That same year, he got a cap with the Spanish national team for the pro Euro Champs and also featured well at another uphill finish in La Vuelta -9th in Ourense-.

BREAKTHROUGH AND TRIBUTE. With the UC San Sebastián de los Reyes, Gonzalo got his first big wins as a junior; at the Froiz team, he cut his teeth during his early amateur stage, a leap always difficult to take; and at the Escuela Ciclista Alcalá de Henares, led by the late Jesús Rodríguez Magro, he took the decisive steps to earn a spot at the pro peloton. He dominated most of the amateur calendar in his last two seasons, with several stagerace victories in 2016 and the overall win in the Spanish Racing Series in 2017, ahead of current team-mate Sergio Samitier. That was the decisive ticket to the pro peloton, a way to pay back the gamble Magro, a former member of the Abarca organisation, made for Gonzalo, and also to Sebastián, Serrano’s grandfather, the man who got him into bikes at age 6, who died just few weeks before the news of this Caja Rural signing were known.