It was another day of pure teamwork from Lidl-Trek and while it was a different kind of effort to the Stage 1 team time trial, it was equally beautiful to watch with every rider playing their role to perfection to help Mattias Vacek maintain the overall lead at Volta Ciclista a Valenciana.
Safe to say Mattias gave it his all to keep the yellow jersey on his shoulders for another day 💛💪 after another show of strength from the whole team today #VCV2025 pic.twitter.com/ZYVHKZ63r9
— Lidl-Trek (@LidlTrek) February 6, 2025
Lidl-Trek knew it would be a tough ask at the start of the day but the Team believed in themselves and in the strength of the young Czech rider, who went on to prove himself time and time again as he dug deep on the steep slopes of the final time to cling onto the yellow jersey.
Edward Theuns and Simone Consonni started things off helping to set the early pace and maintain a reasonable gap to a small early breakaway which was on the brink of being caught at the top of the Coll de Rates.
Vacek was still surrounded by four teammates after the ascent of the climb, Jonathan Milan, Daan Hoole, Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier, and Jakob Soderqvist, with all four doing big final pulls to close gaps and keep the overall lead safe before the gruelling final three kilometers.
It was then down to Vacek who, faced with some tough competition from the pure climbers in the bunch, showed true grit & determination as he fought to lose as little time to the attackers as possible.
#VCV2025 By our calculations, Mathias keeps the lead by 2 seconds!
— Lidl-Trek (@LidlTrek) February 6, 2025
Vacek came across the line 57 seconds from the stage winner, and 43 seconds behind Joao Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) which was enough to hold onto the overall lead by just two seconds going into Stage 3.
Race reaction from Mattias Vacek:
We knew that I had to go deep today, really deep actually, to maintain the jersey or, at least, try to keep the gap as small as possible and in the end, I could keep by just a handful of seconds. That was the goal for the day and the Team did a really great job to keep me in position and pulling all day. I am so happy that we can keep the jersey in the Team and we still have a lot of motivation for the race days. It's a really nice feeling to do that for me.
I was confident before the stage, I knew I could do a good effort although the climb was really steep. I tried to keep to my pace and not follow the attacks too much in the last kilometers because that is what would have put me into difficulty.
Of course, the goal is to keep the jersey for as long as possible and keep up the incredible teamwork. I was really happy to have a gap like we did after yesterday's team time trial as it really helped us. We will do our best over the next stages and try to help each other as a team. Until now, the atmosphere amongst us is great, the Team is doing super good so I am confident for the next stages.
It's nice to see that all the work I have done is paying off and it is showing at races. I don't want to be too over confident for the season but if everything goes as planned, and I get a bit of luck, then some nice results will keep coming.
