Baroncini seals first pro victory as Ayuso takes glory in Luxembourg

Filippo Baroncini took the first win of his professional career today in fine fashion with a solo victory at the Super 8 Classic in Belgium.

The 24 year old Italian jumped away solo with under 15km to ride and held the gap on the chasing group which was led home by his teammate Rui Oliveira in the sprint who took 3rd place overall, celebrating for his teammate as he crossed the line. Rick Pluimers (Tudor) took the middle step of the podium.

UAE were active throughout the race with Tim Wellens breaking apart the peloton on the cobbled climb of the Moskesstraat with 36km to go. This softened up the peloton for attacks from Baroncini and Oliveira with the pair working well to ensure one of them slipped away. Baroncini’s win marks the 19th different rider to win a race this season fro UAE.

Baroncini : “I’m the happiest person in the world right now. The past three years have been tough with a series of injuries so for things to come good like this feels really special. We came here looking for victory today. Personally I came out of the Vuelta feeling really good and knew I had the legs to do something in these races. I’m really happy with my performance and even more pleased and proud of the performance of the team who were just fantastic. It was a hard parcours but the team played their part to make the race hard and we could take the win.”

Meanwhile at the Tour de Luxembourg it was Juan Ayuso who showed yet again his talents against the clock with victory in the individual time trial on stage 4 at Differdange (15km).

The Spaniard clocked a blistering time of 19’10” with an average speed of 48.5kmph, over 7 seconds faster than his nearest rival Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious).

Ayuso now shoots up the GC and sits in second place heading into tomorrow’s final stage from . Mathieu Van Der Poel leads the race by just 3” ahead of Ayuso with Hirschi in 4th at +8”. UAE Team Emirates lead the teams classification.

Ayuso : “It was full gas from the start. Seeing the parcours from this morning it was a course I liked and that it might suit me. I was one of the first guys from the GC to start so I didn’t have many reference times but I managed to suffer a lot and stay in the red zone and could push to take the win. I focussed on myself and did the best effort I could and it was enough for the win today. We’ll have to look at the GC now and see how we’re going to play our cards but for sure we will be trying to win the race tomorrow.”

Super 8 Classic results

1.Filippo Baroncini (UAE Team Emirates) 4:27:09

2.Rick Pluimers (Tudor) +21”

3.Rui Oliveira (UAE Team Emirates) +28”

Tour de Luxembourg stage 4 results

1.Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) 19:11

2.Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious) +7”

3.Mads Pedersen (Lidl Trek) +11”

GC Tour de Luxembourg after stage 4

1.Mathieu Van Der Poel (Alpecin Deceuninck) 12:41:18

2.Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) +3”

3.Mauri Vansevenant (Soudal Quickstep) s.t