Jay Vine scored UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s second win in as many days at the Vuelta a España, soloing to stage 6 glory from the breakaway after attacking over the day’s penultimate climb.
Vine captured his team’s 75th victory of the season after proving the strongest from the 10-man break. The Australian went clear on the short but sharp La Comella climb with 21km to go of the 170km stage before pulling out a minute’s gap and holding on up the 9.6km climb to the finish in Pal Andorra.
Torstein Træen (Bahrain Victorious), who started the stage 58 seconds off Jonas Vingegaard’s (Visma-Lease A Bike) red jersey, came home in second place at 54 seconds, propelling him into the race lead as the GC men finished over four minutes down.
“It was definitely to win the stage, but there was always the option that if the break wasn’t going to win, that I could come back and do some work,” Vine said after his win.
“I know these roads pretty well. I’m from just down the hill, and La Comella is my favourite climb in all of Andorra. I would’ve normally liked to have done it way harder but with the headwind, it was hard to get the guys to pull through and make it really hard.
“I decided to go at the top and with the wet descent, I know the descent really well and I thought ‘OK, this is my chance to get away and then there’s no funny business. It’s just mano y mano’.
“The Vuelta wasn’t on my schedule originally, so to be able to win in Andorra in front of my son and wife is unbelievable and incredibly motivating. That last 5km, all I could think of was ‘This is for you Harrison, this is for you’.”
While Vine soared to the third Vuelta stage win of his career, the day wasn’t all joy for his UAE team. Back down the mountain, GC co-leader Juan Ayuso surprisingly dropped from the GC group at 4km from the finish, eventually losing 11:51.
The team will now look towards João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) as their sole GC hopeful, with the Portuguese rider having led the GC group home at 4:19. He was joined in the group by Vingegaard, Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) and many of the other big names, with the day providing no huge…
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