Pablo Castrillo clinched victory on stage 12 of the Vuelta a España, conquering the mountainous terrain in northwestern Spain on Thursday.
The 23-year-old Spaniard moved ahead towards the end after a stunning attack with 10km left and had already established a half-minute lead over the main chase group, led by British rider Max Poole, with 4km to go.
Castrillo (Equipo Kern Pharma) maintained a distance from the group of four behind him throughout the final part of the brutal ascent. In the final hundred metres, realising he would secure his first Grand Tour stage win, he broke into a smile.
“The breakaway was very hard to make. The other guys were very strong. I was nervous for the finale but I decided to attack on the flat and it led me to the stage victory,” Castrillo said. “I thought about attacking with seven or eight kilometres to go, but I saw the other guys looking at each other so I went with 10km.”
Castrillo’s emotional win came on the day it was announced that Kern Pharma’s former team president, Manolo Azcona, had died after an illness. “It’s unbelievable,” the stage winner said. “It’s for the team, and it’s for the staff.”
Poole (Team dsm-firmenich-PostNL) pulled clear of the chasing group in the final moments, with the 21-year-old securing second place at the top of the Montana de Manzaneda. Spain’s Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) finished third.
Ben O’Connor maintained his lead in the general classification, finishing 14th in the stage. He kept his main rival Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) at bay, maintaining a gap of three minutes and 16 seconds. “It was a tricky start, it was actually really hard,” the Australian Decathlon-AG2R-La Mondiale rider said. “And then we [the team] just controlled the race, made some pace on the final climb.”
Friday’s 13th stage is another battle through the mountains, with four categorised climbs on the 176km route from Lugo to Puerto de Ancares.
