ANTIPOLO CITY—Rudy Roque topped the 140-km Calamba-Antipolo Stage 11 to close in on solo leader and Navy-Standard Insurance teammate Jan Paul Morales in the LBC Ronda Pilipinas 2017 at the Hinulugang Taktak Road here yesterday.
Roque, 25, clocked three hours, 57 minutes and 39 seconds to claim his first lap victory since he reigned supreme in the Vigan-Laoag-Vigan Stage One on Feb. 4 that somehow kept him in the run to claim his very victory here.
Morales, 31, finished second in the stage in 3:59:43, the same time of Go for Gold’s Ronnel Hualda, who wound up third.
The recent feat pushed Roque, who hails from Tipo, Bataan, just a little over two minutes behind Morales with an aggregate time of 37:28:11 as against the latter’s race-leading 37:25:56.
Roque, however, admitted after the race that the goal is to put a distance between himself and Cris Joven of Kinetix Lab-Army, who remained at No. 3, but fell 11 minutes off the former from less than nine minutes the day before.
Joven has a total time of 37:37:03.
“I’m happy I still have a chance at No. 1 but I’m happy to just gain some minutes against Joven,” said Roque, who is on course to surpassing his best finish of ninth place in the inaugural event of this race six years ago, in Filipino.
Morales, for his part, looked spent in the mountains bridging Laguna and Rizal provinces and opted to just coast along for second place.
It was Morales’ seventh podium finish highlighted by four lap triumphs in Stage 2 in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, Stage 3 in Subic, Stage 8 in Daet, Camarines Norte and Stage 9 in Unisan, Quezon.
“I was feeling it in the mountains so I just paced myself. I’m still happy that a fellow Navy won the stage,” said Morales, who showed confidence that the title is within his grasp.
“I think it will be hard for them to close in on Rudy (Roque) and I,” said Morales, who is eyeing to become the very first back-to-back winner of this race considered the biggest in the country today.
Go for Gold’s Bryant Sepnio jumped from No. 6 to No. 4 with 37:41:33, while RC Cola-NCR’s Lionel Dimaano leapt from No. 8 to No. 5 with 37:46:05.
Ilocos Sur’s Ryan Serapio and Navy’s Daniel Ven Carino and skipper Lloyd Lucien Reynante resurfaced in the Top 10 at Nos. 6, 7 and 8 with 37:47:16, 37:48:28 and 37:48:43, respectively.
Navy’s Ronald Lomotos and Kinetix Lab-Army’s Reynaldo Navarro completed the top 10 with 37:48:45 and 37:49:49.
The race will take a week-long break and will resume with Stage 12 set on March 2 in Guimaras and Stages 13 and 14 on March 3 and 4 in Iloilo City.
Ronda is staking P1 million to the champion courtesy of presentor LBC and in partnership with MVP Sports Foundation, Petron, Mitsubishi, Versa.ph, Partas, Maynilad, Standard Insurance, CCN, Bike Xtreme, NLEX, PhilCycling and 3Q Sports Event Management.