Race Report: 2020 Spanish Enduro Championships

And just like that, Spanish 2020 Enduro Champs are done and dusted and dusted it was. With the temperature reaching 30 degrees (86F) and no rain in sight, the trails were really dusty. After a couple of days of official training by the day of the race, some ruts were getting deeper and deeper. Rider after rider hammering the trails left some rocky madness to navigate.

On elite women category Sara Gay Moreno grabbed the first place without giving any chance to the rest of the riders, she won all five stages and the second Ares Masip came 58sec behind. Sandra Jorda closed the podium 1:07.69 after Sara. The young U23 Sara Yusto won all stages on her category and also won the women overall by 7sec over Sara Gay. To complete the fifth position was for the experienced Marketa Michalkova 1:36.66 behind.


In the elite mens race, Gabriel Torralba finally grabbed the Spanish Enduro Champ title, a long-awaited title as on previous years he was U23 category and according to UCI rules even winning the overall, he was still not the Spanish champ. Gabi won 3 stages from five, the first and second ones were key for his title, two long physical stages. He also won the fifth stage, a short but pedaling stage.


With five stages to tackle it was a long day on the saddle, a physical 39km long course with almost 2000m to climb. The first stage was the queen stage without doubt, almost 5km long and with 663m drop. It took 9m47s for Gabriel Torralba to do a full run of this grueling stage. A lot of different sections, rocky, technical, steep, with switchbacks and exposed lines, it had all. In the womens field, the young Sara Yusto started the day with a win on this stage with 14:02 in total.





After a short link stage second stage was another big one, with 3km to go and 343m drop. This was a stage with two clearly different sections. First one fast, flowy and pedaling. But second one a step gnarly one, with several tight switchbacks to navigate. Sara Gay won this stage with 9:11.25, maybe her XC skills helped a bit more here to beat Sara Yusto. In the mens field, Gabriel Torralba won again with 7:05.80. Edgar Carballo, his EWS teammate, was following him close by but almost 30sec lost on the first stage it seemed impossible to recover on the next shorter stages.





The third stage was a short but really rocky one, with some long rock gardens and rock slabs where carrying speed and momentum was key for the win. Sara Yusto won this 3rd stage, taking back the temporary overall lead over Sara Gay. Edgar Carballo won the stage with 2sec over Gabriel Torralva, not enough to get over those 40sec from first and second stages. In the ebike category, Antonio "Toni" Ferreiro kept his winning strike aiming for the overall.






Stages four and five where short ones but fast and flowy. There was a treacherous section on the last meters of the fourth stage where several riders had a crash losing some precious seconds, just meters before the finish.

Results

Full Results

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