Cycling: That doesn't exist. Again John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin) fails by a hair's breadth to win the stage - maybe it just shouldn't be this year with a Grand Tour day win. Today it was the Italian Kristian Sbaragli who crossed the finish line fractions of a second ahead of the German.
Huge joy from the MTN-Qhubeka team. After the team from South Africa was able to celebrate their first ever victory in a Grand Tour, Kristian Sbaragli clinched their first victory in the Tour of Spain today. In the rather wild final sprint, he saved a tiny lead over the much faster John Degenkolb, who found the gap too late.
The thoroughly chaotic finale was the appropriate conclusion to an already confusing and surprisingly hard-fought stage between Valencia and Castellón. With the Puerto del Oronet (3rd category), the first challenge awaited the field after a little more than 30km and apart from the flat, approx. 50km long interlude before the last climb of the day, the Alto del Desierto de las Palmas, there was a wait wavy profile with some technically extremely complicated passages.
With the difficult stage in mind, it rained attacks from the field in the first few meters today - each team tried to make the leap into the breakaway group with one or two riders and after a few really confusing minutes a huge breakaway group with over 40 riders formed, which it but hardly managed to drive away decisively from the field, since the pursuers naturally had no interest in letting such a large group pull away.
John Degenkolb's team from Giant-Alpecin did most of the work, but Movistar and Tinkoff-Saxo kept coming out on top and doing the chasing work. It happened 50km from the finish: The leading group, which had shrunk to about 25 riders in the meantime, was removed from the field, which then headed towards the Alto del Desierto de la Palmas. The Frenchman Kenny Elissonde (FDJ) secured the 5 points in the mountains classification, but was only a few seconds ahead of the field together with two bad riders. Shortly after the following descent, the top trio is back.
John Degenkolb made a strong impression and was seen again and again at the front together with Luka Mezgec and also Tom Dumoulin, who did a lot of work for the German. Like yesterday, there are no really organized moves in the final - Degenkolb is built in and has had trouble for a long time getting into the sprint started by Sbaragli. The gap widens a few meters before the finish line and the German shows that he is the fastest sprinter at the front. But unfortunately it wasn't enough today either - Degenkolb had come into the sprint too late and he couldn't catch the Italian in the service of MTN-Qhubeka. It was close again, but in the end there was another disappointing second place for Degenkolb and Giant-Alpecin. There were no changes in the overall standings - Dumoulin remains in red over tomorrow's first day of rest.
Final result stage #10 Vuelta a Espana
[easy table th=“0″]1.,Kristian Sbaragli,MTN-Qhubeka,03:12:43
2.,John Degenkolb,Giant Alpecin,
3.,Joaquin Rojas,Movistar,
4nd, Tosh van der Sande, Lotto Soudal,
5.,Jose Goncalves,Caja Rural,
6.,Matteo Montaguti,AG2R,
7.,Jens Keukeleire,Orica GreenEdge,
8.,Daryl Impey,Orica GreenEdge,
9.,Pieter Serry,Etixx-QuickStep,
10th, Valerio Conti, Lampre Merida,
[/easy table]
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