Despite Bora-Hansgrohe and Aleksandr Vlasov’s pacing on the steep La Frontera climb, the GC situation did not change during Volta a Valenciana Stage 5, with Brandon McNulty winning overall and Will Barta taking the stage with a 50 kilometre solo from a breakaway.
La Frontera (5.0 km, 9.3%) climb was again included in the fast and punchy 92.9-kilometre final stage, as was the case in the 2023 edition of Valenciana. With low fatigue before the climb, and only flat afterwards, it was the sole place on the parcours for teams to try to change the GC situation. Davide Piganzoli burned only 796 kilojoules in 58 minutes before La Frontera, which is 13.4 kj/kg/h. The 2023 edition showed that anything is possible in the finale of the race if La Frontera is paced aggressively, with Rui Costa winning the overall classification in the very final part of that race.
Bora-Hansgrohe tried to put pressure on the race leader Brandon McNulty, as their leader Aleksandr Vlasov was 17 seconds behind the American GC leader. The situation was almost the same as in the 2023 edition when Vlasov needed at least 8 seconds to surpass Giulio Ciccone in the GC. After the Bora-Hansgrohe mountain train had done the job, Vlasov attacked but could not get a gap and gave up on his efforts. All of the GC leaders were together near the top, with only Pello Bilbao attacking but he was caught immediately after.
Bilbao did La Frontera in 15:12 min, pushing 6.55 ᵉW/Kg. Group 2 with around 15 riders crossed the top of the climb 3 seconds later. Oier Lazkano was one of the riders in group 2 and his power meter on the climb averaged 527 watts for 15 minutes. Lazkano with a body of a Flemish classics specialist needed to produce way more total watts than any of the GC riders to stay with the group. Group 2 did 6.54 ᵉW/Kg for 15:15 min on the climb, with a slight tailwind. In the 2023 race, the pace was similar on La Frontera as Vlasov, Ciccone, Geoghegan Hart, Soler, Bilbao and Arensman did the climb in 15:07 min, which was 5 seconds faster than Bilbao this year.
Will Barta was the strongest rider from the breakaway and did La Frontera in 16:07 min, averaging 6.27 ᵉW/Kg. He lost less than a minute to the GC group on the climb and with the final part of the stage being downhill or flat, he had little chance to win. With 40km to go Barta's advantage was only 1 minute but the GC group was not particularly interested in catching the American. With 23 km to go a bigger group formed that included Lidl-Trek's sprinter Jonathan Milan and some teammates to help chase. Barta's advantage was less than a minute for a long time, but that proved to be enough with Sam Oomen, Patrick Konrad and Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier's unable to catch the American who won his first pro race. Nothing changed in GC as Brandon McNulty won Valenciana, his biggest GC win to date and his first GC victory since Giro di Sicilia in 2019.
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Headline: don’t you mean Barta, not Lazkano?