Joven primes up for Ronda surge

LUCENA CITY, Philippines  – Kinetix Lab-Army’s Cris Joven hopes to sustain his fierce form coming off a win and a two-day break as he gears up for tomorrow’s resumption of LBC Ronda Pilipinas 2017 here.

“Although it’s still too early, I believe I need to make my move to be able to catch up,” said Joven, who ruled the 111-km Subic-to-Subic Stage Four Thursday.

The win propelled Joven to ninth from No. 14 in the overall individual race with an aggregate clocking of 11 hours, 13 minutes, 45 seconds.

He still stood about four-and-a-half minutes behind Navy-Standard Insurance bets Rudy Roque and Jan Paul Morales, who kept holding the 1-2 posts with times of 11:12:15 and 11:13:45, respectively. But the Iriga, Camarines Sur ace remains hopeful of his chances to gain on the leaders in the coming stages.

“Hopefully, I could do the same in the next few stages,” said Joven.

But it won’t be easy as Roque and Morales, along with the other riders in the Top 8 have also primed themselves up for the resumption of the event tomorrow, a lung-busting 251-km race from here to Camsur Water Complex in Pili, Camarines Sur via the dreaded Tatlong Eme in Atimonan, Quezon.

The 30-year-old Joven is out to better his fourth place finish overall five years ago with focus on the championship like the rest of the surviving 88-rider field from an original 96.

Ronda is offering P1 million to the winner courtesy of presentor LBC. The event is supported by MVP Sports Foundation, Petron, Mitsubishi, Versa.ph, Partas, Maynilad, Standard Insurance, CCN, Bike Xtreme, NLEX, PhilCycling and 3Q Sports Event Management.