Ronnilen Quita climbs into title conversation

Group of cyclists in action during the 2026 Tour of Luzon. –CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

CANDON, Ilocos Sur—Ronnilen Quita entered the conversation as a potential threat to overall leader Nikita Shulchenko after his fourth place finish in Stage 9 of the MPTC Tour of Luzon that ended here.

The 7-Eleven Roadbike Philippines rider and national champion climbed from sixth to fourth in the general classification, but still four minutes and 19 seconds back of Shulchenko, who will keep the symbolic yellow jersey for a seventh straight lap.

Shulchenko has an accumulated time of 26 hours, one minute and 59 seconds, keeping a gap of 1:38 over LCW UAE Cycle teammate Ibrahiem Alrefai and 4:15 over Quita’s fellow 7-Eleven pedalist Mervin Corpuz.

It was the only significant change after nine laps of the summer cycling spectacle with those in the top 10 each falling one position while maintaining similar gaps over the Russian pedalist.

Excellent Noodles’ British rider Tyler Hannay is fifth (+4:34), followed by MPT DriveHub’s Nash Lim (+4:42), 7-Eleven’s French cyclist Antoine Huby (+4:50), MPT’s Rustom Lim (+5:32), Seoul Cycling Team’s Jung Woo Ho (+5:36) and Malaysian national team’s Muhammad Maulidan (+5:43).

Quita was part of a seven-man breakaway in the ninth lap that started in Laoag, Ilocos Norte, even going on a solo breakaway during the middle part of the race.

He eventually joined the same group of riders before making a wrong turn with less than a kilometer to go, resulting in CCN Factory Racing’s Daniel Guld beating two riders of Team Pangasinan to the finish.

Meanwhile, Go for Gold Philippines is still on top of the team classification with a total time of 103:15:35, ahead of Standard Insurance Philippines by 1:40.