Barnes wins Setmana Ciclista Valenciana

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Hannah Barnes won finale stage 4 and the overall title at the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana on Sunday. The Canyon-SRAM sprinter capped off a successful week, where she also won the opening stage, by winning the breakaway group sprint ahead of Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Cervelo Bigla) and Alicia Gonzalez (Movistar) in Benidorm.

"The last lap was very hard. To have Kasia [Niewiadoma] and Pauline [Ferrand-Prévot] there with me was really great. They were amazing, especially in the final," Barnes said. "The team had a lot of confidence in me which made me believe in myself too. I knew it was going to be a hard day but after all the work the staff and riders have put into this race, and also our recent training camp, I couldn't not give it everything."

The final stage in Benidorm offered three laps of a circuit that includes the climb over Alto Finestrat (7km at 4.7 per cent), for 118km in total. A breakaway of nine riders emerged that gained over two minutes on the main field that contained overnight leader and stage 2 winner Marta Bastianelli (Ale Cipollini).

The nine riders sprinted to the finishline with Barnes taking the overall win. Given the large time gap to the field, all nine riders featured in the top 10 overall with Moolman-Pasio placing second at 17 seconds back and Gonzalez third at 25 seconds. Bastianelli led in the main field and dropped to 10th overall.

Moolman-Pasio ended the four-day race by winning the mountain classification, Belle De Gast won the sprint classification and Canyon-SRAM won the team classification.

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