Troisième place pour Ivan Cortina au Canada

At the two Canadian Worldtour races of the «Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec et Montréal», the riders of the BAHRAIN MERIDA PRO CYCLING TEAM made their presence felt with some active racing. At the second race held in Montréal this was rewarded with a podium result as Ivan Cortina crossed the finish line in 3rd.

(texte original: Merida International)

Various races can be used to measure a rider’s form in the run-up to the road World championships: There are the Vuelta a España and the Tour of Britain, and there are two one-day races held in Canada within three days under the «Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec et Montréal». Since these two races are part of the Worldtour the list of participants usually is pretty impressive, and the BAHRAIN MERIDA PRO CYCLING TEAM was no exception in this regard: It had sent a strong team to Canada with Valerio Agnoli, Grega Bole, Damiano Caruso, Ivan Cortina and Matej Mohoric riding in support of Sonny Colbrelli and Vincenzo Nibali. As for the finale of the first race held in Québec, Sonny Colbrelli made it into a select group. But the effort to get into that group had been too much, and after it had been absorbed by the peloton he had nothing left to compete the bunch sprint on the ascending finishing straight, crossing the finish line as the last rider of the first group.

As for the second race held in Montréal a lead group consisting of four Canadians and a rider from Israel at first took charge of things. A series of attacks and counterattacks from the peloton whittled down their lead early on, however. On the final 20 kilometers well-known riders such as Sep Vanmarcke, Daryl Impey and Julien Alaphilippe all went into the attack and the AG2R-la Mondiale team even sent various of its riders into consecutive attacks on the hilly circuit. As for the BAHRAIN MERIDA PRO CYCLING TEAM, Grega Bole, Vincenzo Nibali and Matej Mohoric all worked hard to bring back those attacks. Then Ivan Cortina managed to jump onto the wheel of Peter Sagan and get to the front of the race. On the ascending finishing straight the young Spaniard still had enough left in the tank to cross the finish line in 3rd in a sprint of an elite group of riders. With this 3rd place, Cortina made it to the podium, and the young Asturian referred to this as his second most valuable career result thus far, right behind his stage win at the Tour of California.

10TH GRAND PRIX CYCLISTE DE MONTRÉAL: MONTRÉAL - MONTRÉAL, 219.6KM
1. Greg Van Avermaet, BEL, in 6:09.38 hours
2. Diego Ulissi, ITA, st
3. Ivan Cortina, ESP/BAHRAIN MERIDA PRO CYCLING TEAM, st