An overnight illness ends a strong Vuelta
Alexey Lutsenko was not on the start line in Almunecar this morning. His NSN team confirmed a few minutes before the neutralised section that the Kazakh had fallen ill overnight and would step away from the 81st Vuelta a Espana to recover properly.
The timing is cruel. Lutsenko had been riding his best three weeks in a long while, finishing fourth on Thursday’s summit finish at Calar Alto behind surprise winner Jakob Omrzel, and putting himself in one breakaway after another since the race turned south. A Grand Tour form curve that good does not come round often. Leaving on day 13, with the hardest week still to come, removes the payoff entirely.
Try it for $0.99.
A stage built for the rider who went home
Stage 13 runs 192.8 kilometres from Almunecar to Loja with 3,404 metres of climbing, and virtually all of it arrives inside the opening 84 kilometres. Three categorised climbs sit at the front of the route, the hardest being the category one Alto de la Venta de la Cebada, 14.1 kilometres at 5.1%. Front-loaded difficulty, flat finish: the exact profile Lutsenko has spent two weeks exploiting.
The fight to get up the road turned out as messy as expected. Domen Novak, Enzo Paleni, Asbjorn Hellemose and Fabio Van den Bossche went clear early, then a group of around thirty riders bridged across on the climb. Wout van Aert and Santiago Buitrago contested the mountain points once again, Buitrago taking them to stretch his lead in that classification to 58 points against Van Aert’s 40.
Movistar left holding the race
Enric Mas sits third in the mountains standings on 24 points, a number that says plenty about how much of this Vuelta his Movistar team has been forced to control from the front. With the red jersey on his shoulders and a move containing four riders currently ranked between 11th and 14th overall, the Spaniard had no comfortable way to police the road.
Gregor Muhlberger went down on that first climb, which will have worried Felix Gall given how central the Austrian has been to him in the mountains. He remounted and carried on.
Discover the rest of our cycling news on MathODDS!
in your pocket.
Real-time notifications & alerts
Leave a Reply