Tronchon strikes in the final kilometre
Bastien Tronchon was nowhere near the pre-race favourites. But the Groupama-FDJ United rider still threw his arms up in Elche de la Sierra this afternoon, winning stage 10 of the Vuelta a Espana. He beat Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) and Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek).
The finish descended into chaos. Yevgeniy Fedorov and Xabier Mikel Azparren jumped clear of the bunch inside the final kilometre, but neither could hold on. Behind them, there was no organised sprint train left to speak of. Tronchon timed his move perfectly and held everyone else off on the line.
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Visma threw everything at it and got nothing back
Visma | Lease a Bike controlled the race for much of the day, determined to set up Wout van Aert for this slight uphill finish. Matthew Brennan did the grunt work, hauled back the break with two kilometres to go, then shut down Walter Calzoni’s attack. He was cooked by the end.
Van Aert ended up on his own at the key moment. The green jersey had to lean on the other teams to stop the late moves. None of them did. The road opened for a long shot.
Mads Pedersen had already cracked on the Puerto de Socovos. Christophe Laporte had dragged the chase back on in the descent. Sepp Kuss had followed a counter with Milan Vader. Plenty of effort, nothing to show for it.
Enric Mas keeps the red jersey
Up front, the day’s break featured seven riders: Enzo Paleni, Michael Gogl, Jasha Sutterlin, Fabian Weiss, Sinuhe Fernandez, Ivan Cobo and Fredrik Dversnes. Movistar let Visma and Cofidis do the chasing. The gap never went beyond three minutes.
The group blew apart on the ramps before Socovos. Dversnes held on the longest, with Inigo Elosegui getting across to him, before both were swallowed up by the counterattacks.
Among the general classification men, a Sepp Kuss surge prompted Richard Carapaz and Enric Mas to react. No real gaps stuck at the top of the standings. Mas keeps the red jersey. Van Aert, meanwhile, led the points classification by 67 points after stage nine. The peloton rolls out of Cartagena tomorrow and heads to Lorca.
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