Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana 1969 - Gran Premi València 2025

January 26, 2025 The 184KM race from Valencia to La Nucía travels through the perennial training grounds of near every pro cyclist in December and January. The parcour is straightforward until the final 50KM when the riders will take on the famous Coll de Rates as well as the Alto de Turron Duro which tops out just 9KM from the finish. Xavier Cañellas of Sabgal-Anicolor, Baptiste Veistroffer of Lotto, and Martin Pedersen of Lidl-Trek Future Racing made up the break of the day and had 2 minutes 45 seconds with 117KM to go as Bahrain-Victorious were chasing behind. Cañellas dropped away with around 50KM to go as Pedersen and Veistroffer's gap fell below 1 minute. The duo were caught on the bottom slopes of the Coll de Rates with 42KM to go but the majority of the peloton were still together over the top of the Coll de Rates 36.5KM from the line. The final climb of Alto de Turron Duro was very steep at the bottom and narrow the entire way up. Santiago Buitrago of Bahrain-Victorious was aggressive early on the climb and he formed a gap with Jan Christen of UAE-XRG, Christian Scaroni of XDS-Astana, and Marc Hirschi of Tudor Pro Cycling chasing behind. The three chasers caught Buitrago with 10.4KM to go as a larger group was only about 15 seconds back. Buitrago was dropped about 500M from the top but Hirschi, Christen, and Scaroni crested together. The last 5KM got tactical. Buitrago seemed to be out of the picture at this point but Christen started to skip pulls so Scaroni attacked, forcing Hirschi to work. Christen continued to refuse to help so Hirschi put in a big effort, dropped Christen, and quickly bridged up to Scaroni. With 2.5KM to go, António Morgado of UAE-XRG and Buitrago flew passed a cracked Christen and were making progress on the two leaders. However, Scaroni and Hirschi worked well together and with 800M to go, it was clear that would be fighting for the win between themselves. They were side by side and as they got to 200M to go, Hirschi started his sprint at that point and immediately got a gap on Scaroni. He held it to the line to take a win on his first day of racing with his new team. Scaroni picked up second with Morgado winning the sprint ahead of Buitrago for third, 7 seconds behind the Hirschi.