2023-10-09 02:43:13
We knew this extraordinary athlete. A phenomenon on the road for almost 20 years, Alejandro Valverde has won almost everything. World champion at 38, we are now in 2018, the Spaniard ended his farewell to the professional circuit last year.
We discovered this Sunday that his addiction to competition is intact. This Sunday, the former Caisse d’Épargne and Movistar rider, now 43 years old, finished fourth in the Gravel Worlds. This all-terrain discipline, a mix of road and mountain biking, is fashionable and attracts a new audience, which is why the UCI has been organizing an international “final” in the fall for two years.
The latter took place this year in Venitia, not far from Lombardy where another name from the peloton bowed out on Saturday in the person of Thibaut Pinot. Faced with fairly stiff competition, Valverde, supported by Movistar in this new passion, finally finished six minutes and forty-eight seconds behind Matej Mohoric.
The Slovenian tamed this race like a boss, despite a fall three kilometers from the finish, and after benefiting from the setbacks of the big favorite Wout van Aert. The Belgian suffered a fall and two mechanical problems. Dropped ten minutes behind the leaders 70 kilometers from the finish, he finally failed in 8th place.
For Mohoric (28 years old), this success ends a very high level second part of the season. After raising his arms on July 21 in the Tour de France, this downhill specialist did it again in the Tour of Croatia, before winning the general classification of the Tour of Poland.
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