Critérium round-up

Euskaltel put on a good show in today's two concluding stages in the Critérium. On the first stage, a flat 75 kilometre ride, Egoi got into the break, but naturally the break was caught in time for the sprinters to do their thing. Samu, Jorge and JJ came in with the 52-man strong peloton to finish on the same time as winner Downing, while the otherwise excellent Beñat showed that, despite his immense promise, he's still not the finished article, losing an unnecessary and crucial 14 seconds. So too did Egoi, while Amets and Mikel lost 20 seconds.

Hopes were high for the afternoon time trial given Samu and Beñat's solid riding. Beñat did amazingly well to get 5th place, just 11 seconds down on Millar, who won the stage. Samu also looked strong by taking 9th place, while Egoi was 46 down, Jorge 52, Mikel 56, JJ 1:14 and Amets ended up 1:28 down. Unfortunately this resulted in Samu ending up just outside the podium in a typical Euskaltel fourth place. Beñat's solid riding yesterday and brilliant time trial today earned him 10th overall and 3rd in the young riders' competition. If he just hadn't lost those 14 seconds... Egoi was 31st overall, Jorge 67th, JJ 69th, Amets 70th and Mikel 95th. Overall a good showing by the team.

After the stage, Gorka Gerrikaogitia, the team's director at the race, spoke to the team's official website. "Overall the performance was good", he said. "To put two riders in the top 10 of such a high-quality race shows how well the guys did. But yes, it is annoying we didn't win yesterday. We had the opportunity but we didn't take it. Samu did a good time trial, but it wasn't good enough to get on final podium. On the other hand, Beñat did very well. He showed how good he is today as well as yesterday. Overall the attitude in the team was spot on, and we'll do our best to keep it like that".