- The town of Mazarrón will host for the second year in a row the Meta Volante of the Mariano Rojas Memorial Trophy.
- Paco Guzmán, general director of the Vuelta, has announced the details of the participation.
This Thursday has been celebrated the act of signing of Mazarrón as the venue of the third and last Meta Volante of the race. It will be one more year the venue of the Memorial Mariano Rojas. The event was held at the Town Hall of the town and was attended by Gaspar Miras, mayor of the town, Francisco García, councillor for sports, and Paco Guzmán, general director of the Vuelta.
Miras has welcomed the race with enthusiasm, and has shown the commitment of Mazarrón with the race for future editions: "We invite the town to welcome with open arms the riders and teams, who come from our country and from all corners of the world. We also want to thank the organisers for counting on us for another edition".
The race will arrive in the town of Mazarrón at 16:15 in the afternoon and will cross it along the Avenida Constitución, where the Meta Volante Memorial Mariano Rojas will be located.
In 2022 also hosted this trophy. Warren Barguil won from the breakaway that was the protagonist during the last kilometres of the race.
Paco Guzmán has referred to the participation that is going to have this edition. There will be 20 teams taking the start in San Javier. Among them there are 9 World Teams, the highest category of cycling: the defending champions, UAE Team Emirates, Astana Qazaqstan Team, Cofidis, Movistar Team, Bora - Hansgrohe, Groupama-FDJ, Intermarché-Circus-Wanty, Ineos Grenadires and Arkéa Samsic, two more than in the last edition.
It will be the first participation of Ineos in the Vuelta Ciclista a la Región de Murcia. The team that dominated the Tour de France last decade, with 7 overall victories, arrives in the region led by Pavel Sivakov. Another team making its debut is the French Groupama-FDJ, which will be making its debut with a young team with great projection.
UAE, which was the main protagonist of last year's Vuelta, will be ready to repeat. In their ranks will be Matteo Trentin, Marc Hirschi, Tin Wllens and Jay Vine, winner of the general classification of the Tour Down Under, first race of the Word Tour 2023, held in Australia and one of the favourites to win in Cartagena.
All the professional cyclists from the region will be present. Luis León Sánchez, winner in 2018 and 2019, returns to the race for the first time since 2020. Movistar's José Joaquín Rojas also returns after falling just short of the podium in 2021, an edition won by Antonio Jesús Soto (Euskaltel Euskadi), who will lead the Euskaltel team in search
of repeating the great results achieved in previous editions.
For his part, Rubén Fernández will be accompanied by a great Cofidis team. Ion Izaguirre and Bryan Coquard, winner of the Tour Down Under on a profile very similar to that of the Vuelta a la Región, are the other two great assets of the French team.
José Luis Faura, the latest incorporation of the Region to professional cycling, and José María García will make their debut this year with the aim of repeating the success of Electro Hiper Europa last year, when Miguel Ángel Ballesteros was the best regional rider.
All the Spanish teams will also be present. Equipo Kern Pharma, Euskaltel Euskadi, Burgos BH, Caja Rural Seguros RGA and Electro Hiper Europa have confirmed their attendance next February 11th in San Javier. Eolo Kometa, an Italian team whose roots are in Spain, in the Contador Foundation, will also take part.
Other squads to take into account in this edition will be Intermarché-Circus-Wanty, which comes from doing a great role in the Challenge of Mallorca, Israel Premier Tech, with Dylan Teuns and Simon Clarke at the head, and Lotto Soudal, which arrives with a strong team that aspires to everything in the hard course of this edition.
There will be a total of 140 riders of 26 different nationalities. There will be 5 national road champions present at the race: Pascal Eenkhoorn, Dutch champion for Lotto, Nils Politt, German champion for Bora, Orluis Aular, Venezuelan champion for Caja Rural, Vinicius Rangel, Brazilian champion for Movistar, and Lucas Eriksson, Swedish champion for Tudor.
Five other time trial champions will also be present: Raúl García Pierna (Spain), Bruno Armirail (France), Jay Vine (Australia), Erik Fetter (Hungary) and Omer Goldstein
(Israel).
