Twenty-one years old, and a Grand Tour stage already
Matthew Brennan won stage two of the Vuelta this afternoon between Monaco and Manosque, holding off Pau Miquel and Tadej Pogacar on an uphill sprint he read better than anyone.
The finale had been softened up first by Wout van Aert, who went inside the final metres, and then by Pogacar. Both moves came to nothing. Brennan waited, then went, on a finish that suited neither the fast men nor the climbers.
At 214 kilometres, the longest stage of this edition had been controlled by a four-man move: Koen Bouwman, Diego Uriarte, Ethan Hayter, Sinuhe Fernandez. They never held much beyond a minute.
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Nine thousandths, and a jersey that nearly moved
That was Hayter’s margin of defeat in Saturday’s Monaco time trial. It made him the virtual leader for long stretches of Sunday once he raided the intermediate sprint for bonus seconds.
Then the race caught him out and he finished a handful of seconds down on the bunch. Pogacar, third across the line, took bonuses of his own and keeps red. Van Aert stays his closest rival on general classification.
Sergio Chumill went home. The Burgos-Burpellet-BH rider, on his Vuelta debut, crashed on a descent. First abandon of the race.
Visma did not wait around
Two days of racing, one stage win. The Dutch squad spent the afternoon closing down the breakaway, with Lidl-Trek lending a hand near the end, and got their reward faster than anyone expected.
They also got it from an unexpected rider. Mads Pedersen and van Aert were the names on the boards for Manosque. Brennan’s price said nothing about what he was about to do. Watch where he lines up at the next bunch finish.
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