Wout van Aert outsprinted Australia’s Kaden Groves to win stage three of the Vuelta a España in Portugal on Monday and maintain the overall lead.
The Belgian avenged his second-place finish to Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) on the previous stage and secured a first stage win on his Vuelta debut. Van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) holds on to the red jersey, increasing his lead over US rider Brandon McNulty to 13sec thanks to the 10sec bonus for winning the stage.
Spain’s Jon Aberasturi Izaga (Euskaltel-Euskadi) finished third in the bunch sprint, which came at the end of a 191.2km ride from Lousa to Castelo Branco. It was the final day of three in Portugal to open this year’s race, which crosses into Spain for Tuesday’s mountain stage from Plasencia to Pico Villuercas.
Van Aert, who finished third in the opening time-trial stage, was again first to burst for the line but this time Groves was unable to catch him and the Belgian could finally celebrate a win, his first since February.
“It’s worth it to be patient. It’s been quite a while since I could raise my hands and it feels so good,” Van Aert said. “I think I surprised him to go even before 200m. It was the perfect sprint for me.”
The early part of the stage was dominated by a four-man breakaway group, which included Luis Ángel Maté, the oldest rider in the race at 40, but it was his Euskaltel-Euskadi colleague Xabier Isasa who held out the longest.
He was finally reeled in with 20km left and the expected sprint finish was set up. With precious few sprint stages ahead in the Vuelta, Van Aert pulled out all the stops to ensure he was not denied for a second successive stage.
Despite dominating the first three days of the race, Van Aert accepted his time in the overall lead may be over soon with the mountains approaching. “Unfortunately the fun is over,” he told Eurosport. “Tomorrow, I’ll be happy to give the role of team leader[s] over to Sepp [Kuss] and Cian [Uijtdebroeks].”
