Irishman takes his first stage win at Vuelta as Roglic closes gap to leader | Cycling Sport

Max Poole (DSM-Firmenich PostNL), Carlos Verona (Lidl-Trek) and Urko Berrade (Equipo Kern Pharma) separated themselves from a group of nearly 40 runners with 10 km to the finish on the last of the day’s four categorized climbs. The summit of Puerto Cruzeiras, but a kilometer and a half from the finish, the men were caught.

Berard and Verona tried again in the final kilometer, but the Irishman attacked decisively 650 meters before the finish, ahead of Quinten Hermans (Team Alpecin- De Kooninck) and Max Poor (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL).

“I’ve crashed seven or eight times since last year’s Vuelta. It takes a toll physically but it also takes a toll mentally. I thought many times that I had no future in the sport because of the crashes and at this year’s Giro d’Italia when I injured my hamstring I thought it was the nail in the coffin and now here I am, I can’t believe it,” said the Irishman at the finish.

Primož Roglic (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who averaged 9% on the final climb, finished ahead of overall leader Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) and 37 seconds ahead of the Australian. The Slovenian crossed the finish line from Dunbar in 3.31 seconds, along with Enrique Massi, David Gaudeau, Mikel Landa, Carlos Rodriguez and Matias Skjemos. Aleksandr Vlasov, Sepp Kuss and Adam Yates graduated with O’Connor.

Overall, O’Connor’s lead over Roglic is now 3.16, with Maas trailing by 3.58 and Richard Carapaz by 4.10. Rein Taaramäe finished the stage in the group of 25 teams, losing to the champion by 7.44. All in all, the Estonian is 42nd (+43.18).