Dubai: The weeklong Vuelta a Burgos turned out to be a profitable stage race for UAE Team Emirates, which saw a series of strong individual and team performances.
Former world champion Rui Costa ended the race a respectable 10th spot, in an overall classification that was full of highly rated riders.
It followed his second place finish in the fifth stage of the race, which saw him break free from the lead riders with 1.6 kilometres to go on a brutal summit finish.
Costa managed to gain a gap of 10 seconds on the group, but the margin was not big enough to hold off Ivan Sosa (Team Ineos) who bridged across on the hardest part of the climb to take the win.
The day before, Costa was third in the stage, just behind his teammate Alexander Riabushenko who claimed the second spot.
Alex Aranburu (Caja Rural- Seguros RGA) won the race. Costa narrowly missed out on the podium in the first stage too — taking fourth place behind Giacomo Nizzolo (Dimension Data), Alex Aranburu (Caja Rural) and Michael Grosu (Delko Marseille).
Costa said: “I went very close to winning, but Sosa was very strong and he managed to push on in the hardest part. Practically every day, I tried to make the best of my good condition to take a result and as a team we worked well, unfortunately there was someone there to beat us every time. Now, I have a few weeks to prepare for the Canadian classics with the Quebec GP and the Montreal GP”.
