“I think as a team we want to win everything,” were Fabio Jakobsen‘s prophetic words during his pre-race press conference for the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, where QuickStep-AlphaVinyl have now captured both the first stage with Remco Evenepoel and now the second with Jakobsen himself.
Just as Evenepoel blew away the opposition on the final climb of stage 1 on Wednesday, 24 hours later Jakobsen was able to follow suit in his own terrain on stage 2, where a notable uphill gradient in the final 500 metres did not prove any obstacle for the Dutch sprinter to claim his 26th career win well clear of the field.
After being ably supported by his team, including Evenepoel, in the technically challenging final three kilometres, Jakobsen did not miss a beat either when Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux powered past at the foot of the final rise.
Having ably ‘surfed’ the Intermarché train and then jumping away with 200 metres to go, Jakobsen’s gap on the field broadened notably in the few seconds that elapsed before claiming his second personal victory in Valenciana – the previous one was in 2019 – by well over a bike length on second-placed Juan Sebastián Molano (UAE-Team Emirates).
“Today was definitely a hard stage, but we had it all under control,” Jakobsen said later, referring to the five categorised climbs that the race had tackled on its circuitous 171.5-kilometre route from Bétera, a small town just north-west of Valencia, to the equally small town of Torrent, close to the regional capital’s south-western side.
“We’d started well yesterday with Remco and that showed the whole team is in good shape.”
Jakobsen was able to count on Evenepoel personally backing up his drive for the line, a strategy which also kept the Belgian out of trouble at the front of the pack but obviously served as a morale boost for Jakobsen in the final moments before the sprint, too.
“Remco did a long turn for me in the last kilometres and then the whole team did a lead out, it’s nice to get that kind of support from the yellow jersey.
“If one team didn’t pass us in the final corner, I think we had the perfect lead out. But they came underneath so we had to redo-it, I had to find my own way, and I had to launch my own sprint.”
Jakobsen has two more opportunities for the win, at Torrevieja on Saturday and in Valencia, where he won in 2019, on Sunday. But he said that despite suffering from a little cramp when he started his final acceleration on Thursday, his underlying form was sound enough to overcome any excess pain.
“I had a good winter, with no setbacks or bad luck, so it’s just nice to enjoy being a pro cyclist,” he said. “I already had some good memories of this race, and now I’ll have some more.”
