Miguel Ángel López‘s season of exile from the WorldTour will proceed at this week’s Joe Martin Stage Race in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
The Colombian was sacked by Astana Qazaqstan in December over alleged hyperlinks to a doping scandal and has filed a wrongful dismissal enchantment to the Court docket of Arbitration for Sport.
In the mean time, he has had a profitable season with Crew Medellin-EPM, racing alongside fellow WorldTour refugee Oscar Sevilla. He received the general Vuelta a San Juan, the Colombia time trial title, the Vuelta al Tolima, the Vuelta Bantrab and the opening stage of the Tour of the Gila.
López crashed out whereas main the Tour of the Gila on stage 2 after hitting a pothole on a descent. Every week later, nonetheless, he was again in motion on the UCI 2.2-ranked Tour de Catamarca in Argentina.
Crew Medellin is considered one of 20 groups entered within the four-stage race together with the Tour of the Gila winner Alex Hoehn (Above and Past Most cancers), Redlands Basic winner Tyler Stites (Venture Echelon) and one other ex-WorldTour Colombian, Sergio Henao, who’s competing with the Denver Disruptors within the Nationwide Biking League this season.
The ladies’s area can also be filled with expertise, together with Olympic gold medalist Jennifer Valente, Redlands winner Emily Ehrlich, Pan American highway champion Skylar Schneider, criterium champion Kendall Ryan and final yr’s general winner of the Joe Martin Stage Race, EMmal Langley (EF Schooling Tibco).
The race begins with the Satan’s Den stage (146.2km for males, 109.1km for ladies), which is usually one for the sprinters. Stage 2’s Mount Sequoyah stage is significantly shorter than earlier years, all the way down to 143.9km for males and 107.1km for ladies and is the primary stage that produces main general classification gaps.
Saturday’s uphill time trial is simply 4.84km lengthy however steep and troublesome, whereas the race ends on Sunday with a difficult criterium that has eight turns and a small hill earlier than the end.
