photo credits @ La Vuelta
Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) soared to victory in stage 8 of the Vuelta a España today, triumping atop the steep ramps of the Sierra de Cazorla to take his second stage win while also fighting back time against race leader Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale).
After taking bonus seconds yesterday, Roglič began to claw back a near-five-minute deficit on O’Connor, commencing a series of attacks along Category 3 final climb that saw gradients well into the double digits, with Enric Mas (Movistar) the only rider able to follow but powerless to do anything about the three-time Vuelta winner’s vicious finishing kick inside the final 500 meters.
Meanwhile, Mikel Landa (T-Rex-QuickStep) launched a late charge from a rapidly fragmenting GC group to take third place on the stage.
In the meantime, O’Conner was powerless to respond to Roglič’s barrage of attacks, later falling behind during the last kilometers, finishing some 46 seconds down on his Slovenian rival.
Earlier, it took nearly 50km of racing before a breakaway group containing Mauro Schmid (Jayco AlUla), Gijs Leemreize (dsm-firmenich PostNL), Harold Tejada (Astana Qazaqstan), Sam Oomen (Lidl-Trek), Oier Lazkano (Movistar), Mathis Le Berre (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Luca Vergallito (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Ion Izagirre (Cofidis) finally rode clear, later building up a modest advantage of around four minutes.
With 13km to go, Lazkano launched an attack up front, taking Tejada and Vergallito with him as their advantage fell below two minutes. Hitting the start of the final climb with 5km to go, the three leaders were a minute ahead of the peloton, and immediately Tejada began to accelerate, but the group stayed together.
When the peloton reached the climb, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and Primož Roglič hit the front, but a few wheels down a crash on the corner took several riders out of contention, including Red Bull’s Aleksandr Vlasov, as the split saw an elite front group form, including red jersey O’Connor, white jersey Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), defending champion Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Roglič.
Roglič was the one who was really digging in on the steep parts of the climb as the group became within reach of the leaders, and the Slovenian began to pull out a small gap on O’Connor, with Enric Mas on his wheel. Roglič and Mas went around the last breakaway survivor Tejada with 900m to go. It was Mas who launched first, but Roglič was never in trouble and easily overcame the Spaniard to take the win.
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