The Vuelta is finally underway. As another Grand Tour slowly comes to its end in Italy, the Tour of Spain started on Tuesday, and for eighteen stages, not twenty-one as usual. Yet, the very first of them already took its toll atop of Arrate, a typical finish of the Tour of the Basque Country. Primoz Roglic grabbed the win as David Gaudu, leader of the Groupama-FDJ cycling team for this race, tried to limit his losses in the final ascent.
There was no room for a “warm-up” this year on the Vuelta. If there was one, actually, it only lasted a hundred kilometers on Tuesday in the opening stage in the Basque Country, from Irún to Arrate. The organizers indeed prepared a very bumpy route, and a first hill top finish, as a pre-meal. Four climbs were listed in the last 90 kilometers of the day, and above all, the riders had to get over the demanding climb of Arrate (5 km at 8.5%), a few hundred meters from the finish line. However, before the first anticipated fight between the GC contenders, five men took advantage of the first part of the stage to move up front: Jasha Sütterlin (Sunweb), Rémi Cavagna (Deceuninck-Quick Step), Quentin Jauregui (AG2R -La Mondiale), Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal) and Jetse Bol (Burgos-BH). However, the bunch never let more than a 4-minute gap to the leaders, with Movistar and Jumbo-Visma already showing their ambitions.
“La Vuelta is just starting”, Thierry Bricaud
The gap even narrowed to two minutes at mid-race, and Jaurégui, the last man standing from the group, got caught more than twenty kilometers from the finish. The race then entered the decisive part, with the approach of the penultimate climb: the Alto de Elgeta (3km at 9%). Prior to this key moment, the Groupama-FDJ team gathered around David Gaudu and maintained him in the first positions of the peloton thanks to Matthieu Ladagnous, Anthony Roux and even Romain Seigle’s work. Bruno Armirail provided the last support to the young Breton in this same climb, which reduced the peloton to around fifty men. Ineos then set a strong tempo from the bottom of the Arrate climb on, which proved too fast for David Gaudu. “He tried to limit his losses, but he still came up short”, explained Thierry Bricaud. “He probably needed a few days of racing to be on top of his game, but the issue is that we got right away in the heart of the action. It is obviously special to start a Grand Tour with a stage a bit decisive, which immediately makes gaps in the GC”.
Primoz Roglic, who went on the attack on the short downhill after the summit, got the win on this first stage. David Gaudu finished in 35th position, 2’22 behind the Slovenian, in what was a very intense first day already. “We are obviously a little disappointed, but the Vuelta is just starting”, assures Thierry. “There are great things to look for on all these hilly stages for our riders. Regarding David and the general ranking, we will see where he stands after the other tough stages of this first week”.
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