Portugal’s Ruben Guerrero, winner of the ninth stage of the Tour of Italy, disputed between San Salvo and Roccaraso, October 11, 2020
A duo on top of Mont Ventoux: Portugal’s Robin Guerrero won the fourth edition of the Mont Ventoux Déniville Challenge on Tuesday by defeating his teammate and captain Gian de Provence on top of the EF-Education formation, the Colombian. Esteban Chaves.
Guerreiro left alone at the start of Ventoux’s second climb and finally won at the end of 154 kilometers of the track by 53 seconds over Chaves, winner of the 2016 Tour of Lombardy.
While Guerreiro rushed for the win, Chaves remained for a long time under Australian Michael Storer (Groupama-FDJ), finally in third place with a time of 1:28 from the Portuguese.
“It’s really cool, we put in a very good team performance,” Guerreiro stated at the L’Equipe channel microphone. “It’s a great race with such a great access to Ventoux.”
He added, “I’ve had bad luck for 18 months and this victory shows that I deserve a little more. The team also had to get results and we did it at Dauphin and here, so we are very happy,” he added. .
While there were two full ascents at Ventoux in the race programme, the first by Sault and the second by Bédoin, everything was decided in the last 15 kilometres.
In sweltering heat, the Israel-PT upped the tempo since the first climb, but their Canadian leader Michael Woods cracked at the start of the last climb.
The top Frenchman, Guillaume Martin (Cofidis), finished fifth after 2:15 behind the winner.
“I was a bit in the unknown. It was the first race in hot weather, which often isn’t good for me. So I’m very happy with my performance. The last climb was very intense and it was a great cheerleader,” said the Frenchman.
“From this evening, I’m going on a training period in the Jura and the Alps to get to know some of the Tour de France stages. We’ll get there very quickly,” he added.
