Kinetix-Army’s Joven dead set on taking Ronda lead

LUCENA CITY – Kinetix Lab-Army's Cris Joven has vowed to never stop until he can catch up on Navy-Standard Insurance bets and solo leader Rudy Roque and No. 2 Jan Paul Morales in the LBC Ronda Pilipinas 2017.

The 30-year-old Joven is currently ninth in the overall individual race with a total clocking of 11 hours, 13 minutes and 45 seconds, or about four and a half minutes behind Roque and a little over three minutes behind Morales.

Roque and Morales have aggregate times of 11:12:15 and 11:13:45, respectively, after four stages.

The proud son of Iriga, Camarines Norte bared his true intention by ruling Stage Four in Subic Bay Thursday, which propelled him from 14th the day before to ninth overall.

And Joven has no plans of slowing down.

"Although the race is still too early, I knew I needed to make my move for me to have a chance of catching up," said Joven, a proud son of Iriga, Camarines Sur who finished as high as fourth five years ago in Ronda, in Filipino.

"Hopefully, I could do the same in the next few stages," he added.

The race will resume on Sunday with via Stage Five where the surviving 88 out of the initial 96 cyclists will be flagged off in Lucena City and end at the Camsur Water Complex in Pili, Camarines Sur.

The race will take a two-day breather before resuming action on Sunday with the dreaded Lucena-Pili Stage Five, the race's longest lap at 251 kms that was made difficult by the ascent at Tatlong Eme in Atimonan, Quezon.

Ronda is staking P1 million to the champion courtesy of presentor LBC and in partnership with MVP Sports Foundation, Petron, Mitsubishi, Versa.ph, Partas, Maynilad, Standard Insurance, CCN, Bike Xtreme, NLEX, PhilCycling and 3Q Sports Event Management.