Valverde wins Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana

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Jurgen Roelandts (BMC Racing) held his nerve, and his line, to win the final stage of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. The Belgian beat Danny van Poppel (LottoNL Jumbo) in a close sprint to take his first win in BMC colours after a technical finish in the city centre.

Roelandts took the best line of the sprinters through the last set of corners to open up a gap while Oliver Naesen (AG2R La Mondiale) hit the deck while leading the race. Van Poppel came close to overhauling Roelandts but the Belgian held on to take the win.

In the race for the overall classification, Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) finished safely in the bunch to seal the win ahead of Luis Leon Sanchez and Jakob Fuglsang (both Astana). The win, and his two stage victories, capped an excellent week for Valverde, who came back from a horrendous crash at last year’s Tour de France. He shattered his kneecap and broke his talus bone but at 37 looks just as competitive as ever.

Roelandts moved to BMC Racing to fill the void left by Daniel Oss, who moved to Bora, but in an interview with Cyclingnews in Decemeber highlighted that he moved teams to also have his chance of winning races. Like Valverde, he too started the 2018 season on the comeback trail from injury. The former podium placer in both Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders helped BMC Racing to the win in the team time trial earlier in the week but stage 5 represented his first individual win since 2013.

After Saturday's day for the climbers, the final stage into Valencia was designed with a sprint win in mind. That didn't stop the break from going clear early on and despite persistent rain Michal Kwiatkowski (Team Sky), Stefan Küng (BMC Racing), Domen Novak (Bahrain Merida), Rein Taaramae (Direct Energue), Thomas Sprengers (port Vlaanderen-Baloise); and Jan Tratnik (CC Sprandi Polkowice) quickly built up a healthy lead over the main field.

The peloton, controlled in the most part by Valverde’s Movistar team, kept the break within reach but over the top of the final climb of the day Küng pushed on. The Swiss time trial specialist looked comfortable on the long descent towards the city and on the flat roads approaching the last 20 kilometres held a slender lead over the bunch.

Despite the BMC rider's time trial prowess he could not stave off the entire field forever. First Katusha-Alpecin and then AG2R la Mondiale pushed to the front, before Valverde's men closed down any hopes Astana had of splitting the field.

With Kung still swinging out front, Ian Stannard took off in hot pursuit. However the Team Sky rider was quickly shut down before Astana, LottoNL and the sprinters’ teams look over. Küng was eventually caught inside the final 10 kilometres but the finale was complicated by the wet roads and a string of tight corners.

LottoNL looked to be the most cohesive unit but Roelandts was the most canny rider present. He avoided Naesen when the AG2R rider slipped, and then with the perfect line through the last corner, was able to create an unbridgeable gap between himself and the fast finishing van Poppel.

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