Miguel Angel Lopez claimed victory on the queen stage of the Tour of Oman atop Green Mountain, helping his teammate Alexey Lutsenko take control of the overall classification as the Astana pair indicated they are ready to fill the gap left in the team following Fabio Aru's departure.
Lopez attacked the group with his teammates Lutsenko and Jan Hirt on the final climb with only Gorka Izagirre able to follow. Lopez and Lutsenko then dropped the Spaniard, pushing away to win by 12 seconds on the punishing climb.
“I am so happy to win today,” said Lopez after the stage. “I felt very strong today, the legs worked perfectly on the climb. Actually, nobody could attack on the final climb, so we just followed our plan, and after some great work from our teammates, we went away together with Alexey. Of course, the climb was super hard, but we managed to do it as we wanted and finally, we took the stage. It’s a nice feeling to win here and to start my season in this way.”
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Lopez comes into 2018 off the back of a strong finish to last year where he won two stages of the Vuelta a Espana and finished eighth overall. It was a massive confidence boost for him after an extremely challenging start to the year. An off-season crash in 2016 left him with a broken tibia and meant that he couldn’t begin racing until June at the GP du Canton d’Argovie in Switzerland. He then headed to the Tour de Suisse to defend his title but had to abandon after stage 5 when he crashed heavily and broke his thumb.
“It was a very complicated season because of the fracture that I got at the end of 2016. I think that my comeback went really well with what I was able to do at the Vuelta. I didn’t think that the year would go this way,” Lopez told Cyclingnews.
“It was really difficult after the fracture but I managed to return to the level that I had at the Vuelta. There was a very high level there and a lot of strong riders and it finished off the season perfectly.
No extra pressure after Aru moves on
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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