Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) soloed to victory on stage 9 of the Vuelta a España, attacking near the base of the final 13km climb to win at the Valdezcaray ski station and draw closer to the red jersey.
Tom Pidcock (Q36.5) outsprinted João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) to take second and third, respectively after a valiant chase, 24 seconds behind the Dane, but making significant gains on their general classification rivals.
Red jersey Torstein Træen (Bahrain Victorious) finished in a group 1:46 down on Vingegaard, which means he will hold onto the race lead heading into the race’s first rest day.
However, Jonas Vingegaard is now breathing down his neck, just 37 seconds down on GC and looking like the strongest rider in the race. João Almeida moved up to third, 1:15 down on Træen, whilst Pidcock jumped from 11th to fourth at 1:35. The rest of the top 10 are a chunk down, with fifth-placed Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) 2:14 down.
How it unfolded
It was an attacking start to the day as stage 9 rolled out of Alfaro, with various attempts to break away in the first 30km of racing, but no success for quite a while, with the peloton clearly picky about who they let up the road on a threatening day.
Though there were no categorised climbs on route apart from the finish, there were plenty of hills to contend with, especially in the opening part…
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