April 11, 2006

Gómez Marchante wins the Tour of the Basque Country

Gómez Marchante wins the Tour of the Basque Country (UCI Pro Tour)

Gómez Marchante proved to be the stronger rider in this last stage of the Tour of the Basque Country, a time trial of 24 km. around the Bizkaia province town of Zalla, and at the same time bagged the overall victory, the first one in his UCI Pro Tour career. The young SAUNIER DUVAL-PRODIR rider surprised everyone, who expected a final duel between Samuel Sánchez, who was wearing the leader’s jersey, and Alberto Contador. Gómez Marchante was among the top ten all week long, but today he excelled and covered the route in a time of 32 minutes, 44 seconds, doing better than Alejandro Valverde and Toni Colom by six and eight seconds respectively. Juan José Cobo also rode an excellent race, finishing 9th.

Gómez Marchante may have surprised many, but he proved the team’s hunches about him right. This 25-year-old "dark horse" from Madrid has had good positions in the GC of several big races. Besides, he has trained hard for this season, even for the time-trial, travelling with his team and SCOTT to San Diego for wind-tunnel tests on his new Plasma bike in February. He said in an interview early this year that his goals for 2006 were the Tour de France and the Tour of the Basque Country. And he is not alone in accomplishing them, since he is part of a proactive and aggressive SAUNIER DUVAL-PRODIR team and has a sports director, Joxean Fernández, "Matxin", who has strongly motivated his riders to perform well since the very beginning of the season. In the near future, Gómez Marchante will ride in classic races Amstel Gold Race, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Flèche Wallone.

In the Tour of the Basque Country, SAUNIER DUVAL-PRODIR also won the Final Teams GC.