Canadian cyclist Derek Gee won the O Gran Camino road race in Spain on Sunday, finishing with a 35-second edge over Italy’s Davide Piganzoli.
The 27-year-old from Ottawa, riding for the Israel-Premier Tech team, moved into the overall lead of the five-stage race Friday after winning the individual time trial. And he stretched the lead from five to 37 seconds after finishing runner-up in Saturday’s stage.
He was 24th in a large group in Sunday’s final stage won by Denmark’s Magnus Cort, who finished third overall.
It’s the first overall stage race victory of Gee’s career.
“It’s pretty cool to win my first GC (general classification),” said Gee. “I love this race, I wanted to win it coming in — that was the goal — but winning races is not easy. I’m overjoyed.”
Israel-Premier Tech teammate Hugo Houle, from Sainte-Perpetue, Que., was 41st overall after finishing 69th Sunday.
‘They were so good today’
Gee credited Houle and his other teammates — Daniel Lima, Marco Frigo, Pau Marti, Simon Clarke and Jakob Fuglsang — for their help in securing the win.
“I was pretty stressed going into it but I couldn’t have asked for a better team. I mean, I was at the front all day,” he said. “They won every fight into all the important sectors, they controlled the breakaway and there was almost no stress because they were so good today. These are class bike riders.”
Sunday’s finale covered 165.3 kilometres, ending up in Santiago de Compostela after a difficult Category 3 climb with 20 kilometres to go followed by three challenging gravel sections.
Gee last led a race at the Criterium du Dauphine last June in France, spending one day in the yellow jersey coincided with an individual time trial.
Gee was promoted to Israel-Premier Tech’s WorldTour squad from its academy in May 2022. He signed a new long-term deal in June 2023 following his breakout performance in his Grand Tour debut at the 2023 Giro d’Italia when he finished second four times and fourth twice.
He eventually finished 22nd in the Giro’s final general classification standings and was runner-up to Italy’s Jonathan Milan in the points race and France’s Thibaut Pinot in the King of the Mountains standings.
Gee was also honoured as the Giro’s “super combative rider.” Gee followed that by finishing ninth overall in last summer’s Tour de France.
The Canadian is slated to lead the Israel-Premier Tech team at this year’s Giro, which runs May 9 to June 1.
Gee missed two months of racing last year after breaking his collarbone in a crash in Belgium.
He finished 44th in last summer’s Olympic road race in Paris and was the top Canadian in the individual time trial, placing 20th.
In September, Gee was 22nd in the individual time trial at the UCI Road World Championships in Zurich. He did not finish the road race.
Gee is also an accomplished track cyclist, coming fifth in the team pursuit at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Canada’s best Olympic result in the event since 1932. In 2019, he was part of the Canadian squad that finished fourth in the team pursuit at the UCI Track World Championships.