photo credits @ La Vuelta
The best climbers of this year’s Vuelta a España started the second week in exhilarating fashion, waging a brutal showdown until Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) rose to power at Larra Belagua. The Australian climber proved the strongest attacker on the final ascent, after more than 100 kilometers of battling to make the breakaway. He claims his second stage victory of this edition, following his triumph in Pal (stage 6).
Already a double stage winner back in 2022, he becomes the second Australian to claim multiple wins in multiple editions of La Vuelta, after Kaden Groves achieved the same feat last year. In the GC group, Joao Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was the most aggressive, with the support of Juan Ayuso. Yet their rivals resisted, and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) capitalized to seize La Roja from Torstein Træen (Bahrain Victorious), who conceded 53 seconds on the day.
Race Highlights
Attacks flew from the start, but it took more than 100 kilometers of racing before a sizable group breakaway containing Vine and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Mikkel Bjerg, as well as Soudal Quick-Step’s Junior Lecerf, Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos Grenadiers), Kevin Vermaerke (Picnic PostNL), Harold Tejada (XDS Astana), Julien Bernard (Lidl-Trek), Orluis Aular, Pablo Castrillo, Javier Romo (Movistar),Abel Balderstone, Joel Nicolau, Jakub Otruba (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) finally escaped the peloton.
The breakaway later exploded on the first ascent of the day, the Alto de las Coronas, with Romo the first rider over the summit.
From there, he was quickly joined by Vine with 43 kilometers to go, with Castrillo, Balderstone, Bernard, Ryan, Azparren, Conci joining them some 5 kilometers further, only to have Segaert and Vermaerke eventually linking up to make it a 10-man lead group.
With 20 kilometers to go, Segaert attacked at the start of the final climb of the Larra Belagua, quickly opening up an advantage of 40’’ that later swelled 1’30, while the peloton trailed at around 3 minutes behind.
However, Castrillo later chased down and passed Segaert 7 kilometers from the summit. But the Spanish climber couldn’t resist Vine, who bridged his way to Castrillo before going solo with 5 kilometers remaining.
Vine never looked back from there, while Ayuso set a brutal pace for Almeida back in the peloton. But, Vingegaard was quick to react, as was Tom Pidcock (Q36.5), with all of the GC contenders eventually coming back together, except for Træen, who ultimately lost the La Roja to Vingegaard after four days in the lead.
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