Canadian bicyclist Derek Gee gained the O Gran Camino roadway race in Spain on Sunday, do with a 35-second facet over Italy’s Davide Piganzoli.
The 27-year-old from Ottawa, driving for the Israel-Premier Tech group, relocated proper into the entire lead of the five-stage race Friday after successful the precise time check. And he prolonged the lead from 5 to 37 secs after finishing runner-up in Saturday’s part.
He was twenty fourth in an enormous staff in Sunday’s final gained by Denmark’s Magnus Cort, that ended up third whole.
It’s the very first whole part race success of Gee’s occupation.
“It’s pretty cool to win my first GC (general classification),” saidGee “I love this race, I wanted to win it coming in — that was the goal — but winning races is not easy. I’m overjoyed.”
Israel-Premier Tech colleague Hugo Houle, from Sainte-Perpetue, Que., was forty first whole after finishing 69th Sunday.
‘They were so excellent today’
Gee attributed Houle and his varied different colleagues– Daniel Lima, Marco Frigo, Pau Marti, Simon Clarke and Jakob Fuglsang– for his or her support in safeguarding the win.
“I was pretty stressed going into it but I couldn’t have asked for a better team. I mean, I was at the front all day,” he said. “They won every fight into all the important sectors, they controlled the breakaway and there was almost no stress because they were so good today. These are class bike riders.”
Sunday’s ending lined 165.3 kilometres, winding up in Santiago de Compostela after a tough Category 3 climb with 20 kilometres to go adhered to by 3 powerful crushed rock areas.
Gee final led a race on the Criterium du Dauphine final June in France, investing sometime within the yellow jacket accompanied a non-public time check.
Gee was marketed to Israel-Premier Tech’s WorldTour staff from its academy in May 2022. He approved a brand-new lasting promote June 2023 following his outbreak effectivity in his Grand Tour launching on the 2023 Giro d’Italia when he ended up second 4 instances and 4th two instances.
He finally ended up twenty second within the Giro’s final fundamental class standings and was runner-up to Italy’s Jonathan Milan within the components race and France’s Thibaut Pinot within the King of the Mountains standings.
Gee was moreover honoured because the Giro’s “super combative rider.” Gee adhered to that by finishing 9 whole in final summertime’s Tour de France.
The Canadian is slated to steer the Israel-Premier Tech group at this 12 months’s Giro, which runs May 9 to June 1.
Gee missed out on 2 months of competing in 2015 after damaging his collarbone in an accident in Belgium.
He ended up forty fourth in final summertime’s Olympic roadway race in Paris and was the main Canadian within the particular time check, positioning twentieth.
In September, Gee was twenty second within the particular time check on the UCI Road World Championships inZurich He didn’t find yourself the roadway race.
Gee is moreover an achieved observe bicyclist, coming fifth within the group quest on the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Canada’s supreme Olympic result in the event provided that 1932. In 2019, he belonged to the Canadian staff that ended up 4th within the group quest on the UCI Track World Championships.
