Turkish cyclist Recep Unalan retains his stage and overall victory of Tour of Gallipoli 2011
Manisaspor Cycling team’s Recep Unalan again put in a brilliant performance in the final stage of Tour of Gallipoli 2011 on Sunday, October 2. He also retained his overall leader’s yellow jersey.
The race started and finished in Canakkale. Recently, Unalan took the overall ninth place in Tour of Isparta and tenth place in ZLM tour.
The Turkish road racing cyclist took a total of 6 hours, 35 minutes and 25 seconds to cover the distance of 90 kilometres. Slovenia’s Blaz Jarc was in good form and tried his best to take a lead but failed and got the runner-up spot at eight seconds down
from Recep.
After the race for Dean Podgornik told Sportal, “We very pleased that we managed to win the race. Stage was very nervous all the way to goal. Moreover, in the end happened a few falls, fortunately we were able to ac Unalana lead to victory in the overall
standings.”
In the third stage, Ali Riza Tanriverdi was in third place but was unable to hold his pace in the final stage and grabbed eighth place with a difference of 1 minute and 59 seconds.
A four-man break formed early in the stage, comprised of Recep Unalan, Blaz Jarc (Slovenia), Blaz Furdi (Slovenia) and Andi Bajc (Manisaspor Cycling Team). With few kilometres to go, all of them worked hard and quickly gained a lead of a few seconds over
the other cyclists.
Andi Bajc and Blaz Furdi jumped away but they were caught by Jarc in the last kilometres. Unalan increased his pace and launched an attack to cross the finished line first ahead of the other riders.
Mutlu Mert (Tur), Esad Hasanovic (Serbia) and Oleksandr Surutkovych (Azerbaijan) were in ninth, tenth and eleventh place respectively.
Following four days of intense racing, Unalan retained his overall standing with a time of 8 hours, 47 minutes and 46 seconds. Jarc was in second place with six seconds down from the Turkish rider, while Yegor Dementyev (Ukraine) finished third with a difference
of 1 minute and 49 seconds.
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