Mar 8th, 10. HTC Columbia rider Frantisek Rabon clinched the overall victory of the Vuelta a Murcia, Spain, following a trouble-free final stage today. Kiwi Bauer finished in 19th.

Bauer honours the NZ champion jersey with a great showing in Spain ©Endura Racing

The five-day Tour of Murcia is Rabon's first ever stage race victory as a professional, and the 26-year-old took it with a 38sec advantage over Rabobank's Denis Menchovl, and 53sec on third-placed Team Sky rider Bradley Wiggins.

"The first 40km of the final stage, before the one big climb of the day, were a bit crazy with attacks going everywhere. But afterwards we kept it all under control," said HTC Columbia's sports director for the race, Tristan Hoffman.

"At one point there was a break of nine riders, with one of them a potential threat because he was less than three minutes behind Frankie [Rabon] on the overall. Fortunately, he dropped out of the break and we combined with the sprinters' teams to close things down."

In the final sprint, Bos won ahead of Rabobank's Graeme Brown.  This was Bos' second win of the season after he won the Spanish one day race Classica Almeria last weekend.

Kiwi Road Champion Jack Bauer contested the sprint to keep his incredible 19th place on the General Classification.

Related article

• Vuelta a Murcia results

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