The second edition of the Serbian UCI Gran Fondo taking place yesterday in Novi Sad, the second biggest city in the country, saw a big variety of different nationalities occupying the podium spots in both male and female races.
The overall winners was Croatian Drazen Strugar, already runner up last season. He outsprinted 7 other riders after the 100km race with 2 climbs halfway. Joining him on the podium were Alexandros Baxevanos from Greece and Eduardo Martinez Llarena from Spain. The average speed of Strugar was 36.76 km/h.
The women’s race saw a dominant performance by Elena Petrova of North Macedonia. She secured a strong win with an average speed of 31.3 km/h, finishing more than nine minutes ahead of her closest rival. Joanna Czerniej from Poland took second place, while Yana Vikhareva from Russia finished third, 16 minutes and 28 seconds behind the winner.
In the shorter 77km race, counting as qualifier for the older categories, the wins in these respective male and female categories battling for their tickets for the world championships was for Polish Wojciech Bartolewski and Serbian Olga Lapcevic.
