Rojas wins Castilla y Leon opening stage

Image 1 of 32

After two years without a win José Joaquín Rojas (Movistar) finally broadened his palmares today in the Vuelta a Castilla y León by being the fastest at the finish in Zamora. The Murcian rider defeated Sergei Shilov (Lokosphinx) and local young gun Carlos Barbero (Euskadi).

Rojas' last victory was the opening stage of the Vuelta al País Vasco 2012. Despite collecting the impressive amount of 43 top10 placings during this lapse of 25 months, the cyclist from Cieza wasn't lucky to deliver any victory and was mocked for always finishing in the 4th spot of every race he contended.

"To be honest, I couldn't believe myself when I realized I had won after so much time", he assured, stating also that "these last months were complicated, because I had such a bad drought". Rojas took the overall lead, but most likely we won't be successful at defending it due to lack of form (he just came back from a bad crash in Milano-San Remo which ruined his Classics campaign) and an unfavorable route, with a mountain top finish tomorrow and a hard climbing stage on Sunday.

The first stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y León featured flat roads on a flat landscape. Being Movistar Team the only ProTeam of the field, the other 15 squads (14 Continental and one Professional, Caja Rural) set to take part in this Spanish 3-day race were afraid of their potential. The main question at the start line of Ciudad Rodrigo was if the blue team would try to tear the race apart taking profit of the presumable wind and the powerhorses they had in their line-up, like Alex Dowsett or Jasha Sütterlin.

It took a while to see a group of riders jumping off the peloton. It was Juan José Oroz, on his first race with Burgos BH after being hit by the PinoRoad fiasco, who attacked and was quickly followed by Matteo Gozzi and Matteo Belli (both Nankang-Fondriest), Gianluca Leonardi (Area Zero), Matteo Busato (MG Kvis) and Martin Reinert (Team Stuttgart). Diego Rubio (Efapel) and Bernardo Suaza (4-72 Colombia) joined later, while Reinert lost contact halfway and was constraint to abandon.

The final 50 kilometers of the stage went across a couple of 3rd category climbs. Right before those, Movistar Team pushed hard trying to force some echelons. The move didn't reach to produce the desired effect, but neutralized the breakaway. That left the possibility open for new attackers and many riders gave themselves a go, notably Jon Larrinaga (Euskadi), Alex Dowsett (Movistar Team) and Luca Chirico (Mg Kvis-Trevigiani), who got the Mountain jersey.

Unfortunately for them, Caja Rural and Movistar Team were very interested on provoking a sprint finish to play the chances of Franceso Lasca and José Joaquín Rojas. The final kilometer, slightly uphill, was led by an omnipresent Alex Dowsett and Enrique Sanz, both Movistar riders. But it wasn't Rojas but Carlos Barbero (Euskadi) the rider on their wheel to take advantage of their lead-out. The rider from Burgos defied the wind with 150 meters to go and took some meters on his immediate contenders, but was overtaken before the finish line by Sergei Shilov (Lokosphinx) and a powerful Rojas.

Results