José Joaquín Rojas (Movistar) took his second career Spanish national road race championship yesterday continuing a run of seven titles for the Spanish team.
The race consisted of six laps of a 34-kilometre circuit in Alicante and Rojas jumped clear of a leading group in the closing kilometres to go and take the win.
He finished four seconds ahead of Ángel Vicioso (Katusha) with Jordi Simón (Verva – ActiveJet) in third. It means that the Movistar squad will line up at the Tour de France with 30+ victories for the first time.
José Joaquín Rojas: “People say that I wasn’t in the running for victory, but I’d tell them to look at my work in the Giro or the Route du Sud, since those were races where I proved that my role in the team is quite different from the past. I don’t race looking for individual goals anymore: I do things that can be valuable for the whole team and that’s how I earned my team-mates’ confidence, especially for this Championships. It’s been a beautiful season for all of us.
“Should today’s race situation have happened years before today, I’d have probably saved all my energies for the sprint, because I often came out as the fastest at them. However, things have changed for me: I just couldn’t wait, because I had the legs to win solo, and I couldn’t reach the finish with Vicioso, either. Despite Ángel getting a bit old, he’s always a very dangerous rider, who can play his cards well. I tried to make things hard into my group, create splits and attack as much as I could. I also tried to make my team-mates ride calm behind and avoid any potentially dangerous contenders bridge across. I attacked lots of times into the final lap: I couldn’t make a gap on the first one, then Vicioso was the only one to keep my wheel on the second, and with 5-6 kilometres to go, I could leave him behind and go for the win.
It was a marvellous day for me: riding almost on home roads, with lots of people already at the depart (9am), on beautiful terrain… It makes the win worth more. It was also a season fighting against many things. I had to undergo heart surgery in the winter, I broke my wrist in Paris-Nice and it hurt me a lot, even today. Despite all of that, we took energy out of nowhere to claim a win at last, such an important win as you can wear the jersey for a whole season. Now I’d like to ride the Vuelta – the Qatar Worlds don’t worry me so much, as the national team coach didn’t have me in last season when I was in such strong form.”
