Saturday brought a return to racing for the first time since the end of the Tour de France for the UCI WorldTour calendar as the 219 km Clásica Ciclista San Sebastián took place in the Basque region of Spain.

Team Katusha riders were active all day, especially in the end when the attacks came fast – Daniel Moreno and Joaquim Rodriguez were part of the final action, taking fourth and 5th places behind solo winner Adam Yates (Orica-GreenEdge).

“Our team plan worked out very well. “Purito” attacked on that last climb as we’d planned and I was able to watch the situation from my position behind. In the downhill we came back with some 10 riders to the group of “Purito”. But with Alejandro Valverde and Philippe Gilbert both in this group and both very fast, nobody was too keen to mount the chase to pull back Adam Yates,” said team rider Daniel Moreno to the Katusha website.

A late attack by Adam Yates gave the 22-year old British rider the win by 15-seconds to Gilbert (BMC) and Valverde (Movistar), all on the same time with Moreno and Rodriguez. With communications and video transmission all in disarray for the race, Yates was unsure he’d won and didn’t celebrate until confirmation after he crossed the line, unwilling to put himself in a position of celebrating an unwarranted win.

“I attacked on the Bordako Tontorra. I was able to take some meters, but then I had to brake for a motorbike that had crashed. Yates went, then me and some others went behind him, but again we had to slow down for a motorbike. We know this is part of cycling, but it really doesn’t need to be this way. Yates crossed the top as the first rider and we couldn’t catch him in the descent. It was a nice job by Yates; congratulations to him,” said Joaquim Rodriguez.

“Though at an organizational level many things went wrong at this race, as even the race radio did not give much information, the race actually went very well for our team. First we let Movistar do the control work behind the original break of 8 riders. When we reached the climb of the Jaizkibel for the second time, we sent Egor Silin to the front and he did a good job. He was the right man in that group with Barguil and Landa, as he has his own capabilities of finishing off the job. However, when everything came together on the Bordako Tontorra, Purito made his decisive move. Unfortunately some motorbikes decided otherwise. In the end I can be happy with two riders in the top 5 and our whole team doing a good job all day long,” said sports director José Azevedo.