RABOBANK’S GESINK TAKES THIRD IN VUELTA’S STAGE 8

Young Rider in 5th Overall in First Mountain-top Stage Finish

Heading into the 2009 Vuelta a España, Rabobank’s Robert Gesink and his team believed he was in first-rate form. Those beliefs were confirmed at the conclusion of Stage 8 atop the Alto de Aitana, as the 23-year-old Dutchman placed third on the Vuelta’s first mountain-top finish.

At the end of a stage involving more than 3,500 meters of climbing, Gesink tore across the line on top of the Aitana to finish :36 seconds behind stage winner Damiano Cunego. With his third place finish and bonuses, Gesink has soared to fifth place overall, just :29 seconds behind new GC leader Cadel Evans of the Silence-Lotto team.

He goes into the race’s second mountain stage - which finishes with the ferociously steep Xorret del Cati climb - in great shape and with his motivation sky-high. “We weren’t expecting such a good result, you can’t when a rider’s just 23, but in our hearts we were hoping for this,” team sports director Adri Van Houwelingen told Giant’s website. “We’d had a plan, which was to get somebody in the early break, and that’s what we did with Pieter Weening.”

Weening joined five other riders in a breakaway 37 kilometers into a stage that had eight categorized climbs over a total distance of 206km. “Then after that move had softened things up,” Van Houwelingen continued, “we had six Rabobanks in the front group with 30 kilometers to go, so Robert knew he could count on a lot of support.”

The team knew they could count on the technologically advanced Giant bicycles they were riding, too. The TCR Advanced SL bikes are built to give riders maximum advantage on sprints and climbs, with the huge box-shaped MegaDrive downtube and super-stiff PowerCore bottom bracket and chain stay region.

In the end, Van Houwelingen revealed, Gesink had proved more than capable of surviving by himself on the final 22-kilometer monster climb of Aitana. “He did brilliantly. We had a plan which was that he should keep calm and not try to break away as he likes to do, particularly as we knew there was a headwind in the last six kilometers. Then he accelerated at just the right moment to get that third place and the time bonus that goes with it.”

From here on, Van Houwelingen is hopeful that Gesink will continue to show strongly, but insists, “We’re not putting him under any pressure. Instead we’ll just take it day-by-day, and keep our fingers crossed. But so far, it’s going really well!”

For his part, Weening rode his TCR Advanced SL bicycle into second-place in the King of the Mountains competition, by reaching the summits first on five of the eight climbs of the day.