Nacer Bouhanni wins stage 6 as Molard stays in red – La Vuelta
2018 Vuelta a Espana
Stage 6
One day after finishing the previous stage rock bottom in 176th place amid accusations of a bust-up with his Cofidis sports director, under-fire Bouhanni bounced back with his first win on the Vuelta in four years.
The combative sprinter proved the strongest in a reduced bunch sprint at the fiery conclusion of the 155.7km stage along the Murcian coast – holding off Dutchman Danny van Poppel (LottoNL-Jumbo) and a late surge by the Italian champion Elia Viviani (Quick-Step Floors).
Italians Simone Consonni (UAE Team Emirates) and an agitated Matteo Trentin (Mitchelton-Scott) completed the top five in a fiercely contested finale as the Slovakian world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) could only muster ninth place.
France’s Molard was part of the leading 50-rider main pack to conserve the race lead – but his Groupama-FDJ team-mate Thibaut Pinot was one of the big-name casualties after a crash inside the final 30km split the peloton.
Although none of them hit the deck themselves, Frenchman Pinot, Dutchman Wilco Kelderman (Team Sunweb) and the Russian Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha Alpecin) were among a host of riders who saw their chase disrupted by strong crosswinds. They all finished in a large gruppetto which eventually came home 1’44” down on the leading pack.
Kelderman dropped out of the top 10 accordingly although the top five in the general classification remained the same with Molard retaining his 41-second gap over the Polish green jersey, Michal Kwiatkowski of Team Sky.
Three riders picked the short straws and rode clear early on in the stage from Huercal-Overa, with the beleaguered Australian Richie Porte (BMC) testing his legs in a rare foray off the front of the peloton.
Porte, who started the day more than 40 minutes down in the general classification, was joined by Spanish duo Luis Angel Mate (Cofidis) and Jorge Cubero (Burgos-BH) in a doomed break which was kept at around the two-minute mark as the race rolled up the east coast of southern Spain and into the region of Murcia.
Mate, the polka dot jersey, picked up the maximum three points over both the two third-category summits of the stage, consolidating his lead in the king of the mountains competition.
Other than those two lumps, there was very little initial animation on a stage that was ridden at a fairly sedate pace given a mixture of blustery winds and the apparent inevitability of a Viviani win.
Shortly after the intermediate sprint at Cartagena – won by Cubero – the three leaders were reeled in with 29 kilometres remaining, with that man Cubero the last to throw in the towel.
And then the fireworks came.
Just as the pace was up with 29km remaining, some unmarked bollards in the middle of the road after a blind right-hand bend into the shade took out half a dozen riders, with the Italian Fabio Felline of Trek-Segafredo and the Belgian Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Soudal) very much the worst off.
As the strung-out peloton split in two, strong crosswinds caused each of the packs to split into a series of echelons – while a cluster of riders, including Kelderman, picked up mechanical issues at the worst possible moment.
Eventually a huge chasing group of more than one-hundred riders formed – but the damage was done. With EF Education First-Drapac, Team Sky and Bora-Hansgrohe all pulling hard on the front of the small main pack, the gap was well over a minute-and-a-half as the riders approached the outskirts of San Javier.
With Viviani blessed with a number of Quick-Step Floors team-mates, the scene was set for the Italian to add a second win following his Stage 3 scalp at Alhaurin de la Torre.
But Viviani lost his train on a huge roundabout inside the final kilometre and was forced to launch his sprint was far, far back. By this point, Bouhanni – with a point to prove following his Tour de France snub in July and yet more negative press in the Spanish papers – opened up early.
Van Poppel, Consonni, the Spaniard Ivan Garcia (Bahrain Merida) and the European champion Trentin all gave the Frenchman a run for his money. But Bouhanni held on and – despite a late deviation which angered Trentin – took the third Vuelta stage win of his career, and his first in a Grand Tour for four years.
“It was a very quick finish and after yesterday I was very angry after all the untruths said about me,” said 28-year-old Bouhanni, who took to Twitter earlier to describe the reports of him lashing out at his team car as designed to make him “the bad boy that I am not”.
“I changed my train today and I had very good legs and got myself into a great position. Four years ago I won in a very similar type of sprint and I’m delighted to have won again,” he added, 24 hours after finishing all on his own, eight minutes behind the gruppetto.
Speaking of gruppettos, Kelderman – fourth in last year’s Vuelta and sitting pretty in sixth place going into Thursday’s stage – told reporters that a problem with his rear brakes forced him to change bikes just at the moment that the crosswinds caused yet more chaos after the crash.
“Initially I was still there but the bunch went full gas and after the bike change I had already lost a minute or so,” he said.
