What a start! Dylan Groenewegen gives Unibet Rose Rockets the win in Clàssica Valenciana

Dylan Groenewegen's first victory in the Unibet Rose Rockets jersey is already a fact.

In the Classica Comunitat Valenciana Gran Premi Valencia 2026, a (mass) sprint seemed more than a realistic scenario, although the riders still faced the Coll de Rates (albeit from the other, easier side) and the Coll de Raconet (4.8 kilometers at 4%) in the first roughly hundred kilometers. The last seventy kilometers, however, were not too challenging, so the fast men seemed to have the advantage.

Speaking of fast men: with former winner Dylan Groenewegen (Unibet Rose Rockets), French sprint sensation Paul Magnier (Soudal Quick-Step), Pau Miquel (Bahrain Victorious), Emilien Jeannière (TotalEnergies), Iúri Leitão (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), and Manuel Peñalver (Team Polti VisitMalta), there were plenty of strong sprinters at the start, ready for an early season showdown on Spanish soil.

Leijnse attacks once again
Three riders, however, were not interested in a sprint and took off early. Just like in the previous Spanish opening races, Enzo Leijnse showed his attacking side. The 24-year-old Dutchman—who after leaving Picnic PostNL now defends the colors of Portuguese Anicolor/Campicarn—was joined by Spaniard Jokin Murguialday (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Italian Samuele Zoccarato (MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort).

Leijnse and company on the attack - photo: Fotopersbureau Cor Vos

These three attackers built a maximum lead of one minute, but it was clearly not fast enough yet for Leijnse and Zoccarato. The two hard riders decided to step it up, dropped Murguialday, and thus started a Spanish variant of the Trofeo Baracchi. The gap to the peloton visibly increased: with one hundred kilometers remaining, it was over three minutes.

Crosswind alert, Unibet Rose Rockets stays focused
In the peloton—led by Unibet Rose Rockets and Soudal Quick-Step, the teams of Groenewegen and Magnier—there was no sign of nervousness, let alone panic. With a long flat finale ahead, a mass sprint was basically written in the stars. However, the strong crosswinds on the Spanish plateau had other ideas, and the riders in the peloton clearly felt it too.

With just over thirty kilometers on the clock, several teams saw a perfect chance to shake things up. The peloton split into several echelons. A first group of seventeen riders—early escapees Leijnse and Zoccarato had by then been caught and dropped—remained ahead and rode at a steady pace toward the finish in Valencia.

Peloton refuses to give up easily
Remarkably, Unibet Rose Rockets was represented by no fewer than four riders: sprint leader Groenewegen, Elmar Reinders, Rory Townsend, and Karsten Larsen Feldmann. Also up front were Magnier and his Soudal Quick-Step teammates Dries Van Gestel and Ceriel Desal, the speedy Giovanni Lonardi (Team Polti VisitMalta), Emilien Jeannière (TotalEnergies), Amaury Capiot (Jayco AlUla), and Vlad Van Mechelen (Bahrain Victorious).

However, this elite group had to work hard, as the peloton—with various teams sharing the workload at the front—was not far behind. Entering the last ten kilometers, the gap between the two groups was around twenty seconds. In short, anything could still happen in the finale, but the Groenewegen group remained just out of reach of the larger peloton.