PILI, Camarines Sur–Rudy Roque and three fellow Navy-Standard Insurance riders seek to keep their stranglehold on the top four spots even as Kinetix Lab-Army’s Cris Joven tries to crash the party when the LBC Ronda Pilipinas 2017 resumes today with the 227-km Stage 7 that starts at the Camsur Watersports Complex here and ends in Daet, Camarines Norte.
Just two days after ruling the 46.6-km Pili-San Jose Stage 6 Team Time Trial, Navy sets its sights on the individual race as it hopes to device a plan to protect their group of the first four slots occupied by red LBC jersey wearer Roque, Ronald Lomotos, Daniel Ven Carino and defending titlist Jan Paul Morales.
Roque has clung onto the overall lead since Day 1, and after six stages, he has an aggregate time of 18 hours, 12 minutes and 48 seconds while Lomotos, Carino and Morales are in second, third and fourth places with clockings of 18:13:47, 18:14:43 and 18:15:51, respectively.
Cris Joven of Kinetix Lab-Army is at No. 5 overall with a time of 18:15:51 after jumping from as far as 24th in Stage 1, to No. 9 in Stage 3 and now No. 4.
Rounding up the Top 10 were Go for Gold’s Elmer Navarro (18:17:57), RC Cola-NCR’s Leonel Dimaano (18:18:01), Go for Gold’s Ismael Grospe, Jr. (18:19:02), Army’s Lord Anthony del Rosario (18:19:44) and Go for Gold’s Jonel Carcueva (18:20:33).
And Navy coach Reinhard Gorrantes said no lead is safe in this kind of race.
“It is still too early to tell and we have no way to find out who will win this race,” said Gorrantes, himself a former Ronda campaigner before retiring a few years back, in Filipino. “That is why we have to protect it well and hope we can widen the gap as the race progresses.”
Gorrantes said today’s Stages 7, which will unfurl here, circles to some parts of Quirino and Quezon provinces before heading to Daet covering a 227-km distance;
Stage 8 is an 183-km lap that unfolds in Daet and concludes in Unisan, Batangas, the next day, followed by Stage 9, a criterium race at Paseo in Sta. Rosa Laguna, on Feb. 19 will be critical to a rider’s campaign.