April 20th, 2023
Telefónica-backed squad crowns four days of hard work -with all consecutive breaks in the Tour of the Alps- as Austrian snatched first win in Blue colours, achieves squad’s eighth success in 2023 (7th for the men’s team)
A team with big desire to win, and a rider who has gone through many difficult times -injuries due to crashes; a tough meningitis two years ago-, both seeing their sacrifice paying off on Thursday. Gregor Mühlberger and the Movistar Team finished off the ‘fuga de la fuga’, those famous words from a great man, to claim victory on stage four of the Tour of the Alps, on Trentino soil towards Predazzo with the Passo Pramadiccio (Cat-2; 10km at 6%) just before the finish.
Mühlberger was part of a 13-man breakaway featuring no less than four members from the squad led by Pablo Lastras and Maximilian Sciandri. Óscar Rodríguez (6th), Antonio Pedrero (10th) and Sergio Samitier, who anticipated the Austrian’s move in the early slopes, all launched Gregor into the decisive split together with youngster Pellizzari (GBF, 3rd) and Torstein Traeen (UXT, 2nd), who, together with the Blue rider, reached down the Italian in the descent after he had left behind the man from the Movistar Team.
Gregor would end up taking the better out of his two rivals in the sprint to claim his 18th pro victory, the first with the Abarca Sports organisation, and increase the Movistar Team account up to eight wins in 2023, seven for a men’s squad whose commitment -four out of four days into the breakaway; three attempts from Samitier, one from Juri Hollmann- already more than deserved to raise their arms victorious.
QUOTES / Gregor Mühlberger:
“A lot of time has passed since my last win, three long years. I’m super grateful to have had this opportunity and to be able to celebrate with the team. It was already amazing to have got four riders into the breakaway, and I tried to take advantage from that by jumping on the final climb together with Sami (Sergio Samitier). I tried to keep that gap alive and leave the rivals behind, but the young ‘rocket’ from Bardiani was incredibly. Congrats also to him, because what he showed today and the future that lies ahead will surely grant him more opprortunities. In the end, I was able to finish things off in the sprint. I’m especially thankful to my team-mates, for the support all day, and the whole group for taking care of me throughout this time.”
STAGE 4 (Rovereto-Predazzo, 152,9 Km) – STAGE CLASSIFICATION
- Gregor Mühlberger (Team Movistar)
- Torstein Træen (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team)
- Giulio Pellizzari (Bardiani-CSF-Faizané)
- Patrick Konrad (Bora-hansgrohe)
- Stefan De Bod (EF Education-EasyPost)
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
- Tao Geoghegan Hart (Team INEOS Grenadiers)
- Hugh Carthy (EF Educatio-EasyPost) + 0:22
- Jack Haig (Bahrain-Victorious) +0:28
Predazzo (Italy), April 20th, 2023
