Foreign Riders Who Gripped The Leader’s Jersey From The Start—And Never Looked Back!

Foreign aces Dae Yeong Joo, Francisco Mancebo Perez, Jeroen Meijers and David McCann stamped their dominance on Philippine cycling.

Evocatively, Mancebo Perez defeated defending champion Ronald Oranza by three minutes and twenty seconds to claim the 2019 LBC Ronda Pilipinas title, while Dae Yeong Joo edged Jan Paul Morales by a razor-thin six seconds in the 2025 MPTC Tour of Luzon. These dominant foreign riders each gripped the overall leader’s classification from the opening stage and never looked back.

Furthermore, Giant Asia Racing David McCann and Dutch national Jeroen Meijers achieved the same across different times. McCann had held the Yellow Jersey in 2010 with a staggering margin of 6 minutes and 45 seconds over the Filipino runner-up Lloyd Lucien Reynante. Meijers, in the 2019 Le Tour de Filipinas, also held the Purple (the corporate branding of Air21) Leader’s Jersey throughout the five-day stage race, ultimately securing the title with a 45-second margin over Singapore’s Goh Choon Huat. McCann’s margin remains the largest recorded winning lead by a foreign rider who led from start to finish—a stark contrast to Joo’s narrowest recorded lead of 6 sec since the birth of the Summer Sports Spectacle on Wheels in 1955.

However, despite his tactical brilliance, Dae Yeong Joo did not translate this individual victory into the overall Team Classification title for his decimated Gapyeong squad. In sharp contrast, Francisco Mancebo Perez not only overwhelmingly secured his overall jersey in the 2019 LBC Ronda Pilipinas with a staggering three-minute, twenty-second lead, but also led his Matrix Powertag Japan cycling team to the overall Team Championship.