Alejandro Valverde secures his second win of the season after claiming stage 2 of the Vuelta a Andalucia Ruta Ciclista Del Sol 2012
Alejandro Valverde had a terrific start to his 2012 season with a second overall position at the Tour Down Under and a stage 5 win at the race.
The cyclist continued his terrific form to claim the stage 2 victory at the ongoing Vuelta a Andalucia Ruta and successfully grabbed the second stage of the race.
Valverde finished the 150.7 kilometre race in a quickest time of 4 hours, 2 minutes and 37 seconds to claim the top spot.
Denis Menchov, Rein Taaramae, Frank Schleck and Sergey Lagutin achieved the next four positions.
The 31-year-old was overwhelmed with his first win of the race and thanked the whole Team Movistar’s squad for their support.
He briefed after crossing the finish-line, "I'm tremendously happy and I want to thank all the team, because they were phenomenal from start to finish of the stage".
"To tell the truth we didn't plan to race with the leadership in mind, we were just going for the stage victory, because the GC was complicated due to the short climb and the gaps by some of our rivals on the overall", Alejandro concluded.
The 31-year-old started the race slowly but surely. He finished the opening ITT stage of the race at the 25th position and claimed the 51st spot during the first stage.
Valverde was at the 25th overall position before the start of the second stage and the victory helped him with the 1st overall position at the stage 2 classifications.
The Spaniard is now leading the race with an advantage of 3 seconds over Rein Taaramae and 8 seconds over Jerome Coppel.
Denis Menchov, Sergey Lagutin and Tom Dumoulin are at the 4th, 5th and 6th positions after the stage 2 classifications.
Alejandro is leading the point’s classifications with a total number of 25 points in his pocket.
Javier Ramirez Abeja and Patrick Gretsch are the second and third spots with the same number of points.
Luis Angel Mate Mardones of Team Cofidis is leading the Sprint Classifications, while his teammate, Mickael Buffaz, is dominating the mountain’s category of the race.
With two more stages to go, Valverde is definitely a favourite to lead the overall classifications at the race.
He is now targeting the 157.1 kilometre chase to Las Gabias scheduled on February 22nd, 2012.
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