Nicolas Roche (Team Sunweb) leads a Grand Tour for the second time in his career; taking the Vuelta race lead on stage 2 into Calpe today.
The Irish rider took the race lead back in 2013; attacking on stage 2 and winning the stage before grabbing the race lead on stage 8.
Today he got clear in a really powerful breakaway over the final very testing climb.
And when they opened the gap and Roche was best placed of them, he was in the driving seat to take the race lead.
Nairo Quintana (Movistar) attacked from the breakaway in the closing kilometres to win just ahead of the breakaway and take the 10 second bonus.
However, Roche sprinted in at the head of the remains of the escape group just seconds later for 2nd place. And that was enough to give the Irish cyclist the race lead.
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Roche’s form is
clearly the best it has been for a number of years; the line-up in the escape
he ended up in and the legs he showed at the finish reflecting superb
condition.
The late cat 2 climb was brutal and split the race to pieces, with the field shattering at the back and throughout.
A lead group of
six pulled clear on the climb, with race leader this morning Miguel Angel Lopez
(Astana) left isolated in a chasing group.
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But up front the
strong men were on the march; stage winner Quintana and new race leader Roche
joined by a very strong foursome.
Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) was there along with Rigoberto Uran (EF Education First), Fabio Aru (UAE Team Emirates) and
Mikel Nieve (Mitchelton-Scott).
They shared the
workload up front until Quintana took flight with 3km to go and he was never
seen again.
However, Roche
and the others closed the gap to him down to five seconds on the finish line,
which was to prove crucial for the Irish cyclist.
It meant
Quintana, whose Movistar team lost 11 seconds to Roche’s Team Sunweb in
yesterday’s TTT, took a 10 second bonus on the line to add to the five seconds
he gained.
However, Roche
brilliantly took the sprint for 2nd place, grabbing his own time bonus, and
that puts him in the lead by two seconds over Quintana.
Roglic was 3rd
today, Uran 4th and Aru 5th; all on the same time as Nicolas Roche.
The last of the
breakaway, Nieve, almost crashed
in the last kilometre and he came home in 6th some three seconds down on Roche
and the three others he was with.
The next group
finished some 32 seconds behind Roche and the three strong men he was with.
Sam Bennett
(Bora-hansgrohe), who was an outside bet for a sprint today depending on how
the final climb was raced, was dropped at the start of the climb – the pace
into it proving too much.
In the end the finale turned into the first big general classification of the race and Roche not only passed that test in flying colours; he won the fight for red today.
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