Nadav Raisberg made history Sunday, with the 25-year-old rider from Kibbutz Dafna winning the green jersey at the prestigious Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes, formerly the Dauphin\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Raisberg, a member of the NSN team, won the title awarded to the race\u2019s points leader after 1,200 kilometers and several punishing climbs in the Alps.<\/p>\n
He took control of the jersey last week with a strong second stage, finishing eighth, and fought to defend it with three breakaways and four intermediate sprint victories that earned him points. In the fifth stage, he finished seventh, strengthening his hold on first place in the sprinters\u2019 standings.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, in the eighth stage, he held on to celebrate the biggest achievement of his career. Mexico\u2019s Isaac del Toro completed a comeback with a win in the final stage, securing the overall title.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m living the dream,\u201d an exhausted Raisberg said at the finish. \u201cThis is only the beginning. I\u2019m proud of my people, happy to see the name \u2018Israel\u2019 announced on the podium and convinced that Israeli children will be inspired and go above and beyond.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t doubt myself. When I was riding the final meters uphill, I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about my country and how proud I am of it. Of course it was hard, but this jersey gave me strength. This is definitely not the peak. Greater achievements will come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dror Pekatch, the team\u2019s Israeli sports director, said Raisberg\u2019s accomplishment was twofold. \u201cNadav\u2019s achievement this week is both winning a very prestigious jersey in one of the races where teams select riders for the Tour de France, and the fact that he got into three breakaways after long physical and mental battles,\u201d Pekatch said. \u201cAnd the beauty of it is that he does it all with a smile and without drama. An achievement like this can be a turning point in a career, and I hope that will be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nadav Raisberg made history Sunday, with the 25-year-old rider from Kibbutz Dafna winning the green jersey at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-737286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}