Jonas Vingegaard wins atop Col du Tourmalet as Kuss retains lead – Vuelta a Espana

Vuelta a Espana 2023

Stage 13

Jonas Vingegaard showed his supreme climbing ability at La Vuelta a España with a stage-winning solo attack on the Col du Tourmalet as Team Jumbo-Visma stamped their authority on the 2023 race with a 1-2-3 stage finish.

The team entered the stage with three riders in the top 10, all three of which became instant race favourites as the defending champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) was dropped from the lead group with 87.3km remaining and quickly losing time to the Jumbo-Visma trio and eventually ceding over 27 minutes.

By the start of the final ascent of the Col du Tourmalet, Jumbo-Visma had four riders in an elite selection of around 16 riders, and Vingegaard was able to attack with 7.6km remaining.

Ninth place is the overall classification, Enric Mas (Movistar) was the only serious threat in the final group. However, he gave up his pursuit of Vingegaard after making a bridging attempt only for Kuss to cruise on his wheel with 5.5km remaining and make a brief counterattack inside the final 4km – proving the tactical impossibility for Mas to establish a viable chase to the Dane.

Kuss, meanwhile, made a blistering attack just outside the Flamme Rouge with 1km remaining. He bridged back part of the sizeable margin to Jonas Vingegaard and pulled out a minor two-second advantage over the third-place finisher Primož Roglič, who himself was five seconds ahead of Mas and the remnants of the lead group.

Vingegaard finished the stage 29 seconds ahead of his teammate Kuss, leaving Kuss in the red jersey with Roglič now in second place at 1:37 and Vingegaard in third 1:44 behind his teammate – making for a Jumbo-Visma 1-2-3 in the general classification.

“I’m just so happy and I couldn’t choose a better day,” an emotional Vingegaard said after the race finish.

“This one is for my daughter Frida. Today is the birthday of my daughter and I wanted to win for her so bad today,” he added. “I’m just so happy and today I did it for her.

“Our plan was to see if we could take some time on the opponents today. That happened and I’m just so happy and proud to do it today.”

Asked if the dominant finish order was part of the plan, Vingegaard said, “I think it was even better than the plan.

Remco Evenepoel finished the stage over 20 minutes down on the stage winner Vingegaard.

A 134km stage with three major ascents was always set to be explosive, and from the flag, the stage lived up to expectations.

The stage rolled straight into a 4.4km, 5.4% climb to the Puerto de Portalet, which saw Arkéa-Samsic on the attack from the outset. It was Romain Bardet, though, who was the first to carve out a minor lead over the summit of Puerto de Portalet – grabbing three KOM points and taking to the descent with a nominal lead.

Bardet’s attack didn’t last long, with the Frenchman sitting up as the peloton pulled him back within several kilometres.

Eduardo Sepulveda (Lotto-Dstny) attacked on the descent with 118km to go, soon joined by Jonathan Castroviejo (Ineos Grenadiers) and Edward Theuns (Lidl-Trek) with around 110km of the stage remaining.

The group swelled with new arrivals from Edward Planckaert (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Stefan Bissegger (EF Education-EasyPost), and Imanol Erviti (Movistar) by the time this small breakaway began the ascent of the Col d’Aubisque.

The climbing pace of the peloton soon slashed through the advantage of the six escapees as they were pulled in within 2km of the climb.

As the race ascended the Aubisque, in place of a breakaway forming a grand series plot twist hit the 2023 Vuelta with incredulous millions watching as Remco Evenepoel lost touch with the favourites group with 87.3km of the stage remaining. Sixth-place João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) also found himself dropped alongside Evenepoel and was soon also out of GC contention.

Michael Storer (Groupama-FDJ) went over the Aubisque summit solo, before driving a breakaway group that established around a 30-second advantage. However, all eyes were on Evenepoel rather than the breakaway as seconds turned to minutes and all of his GC hopes vanished. Indeed the gap from the favourites grew to two minutes with 60km remaining, as the breakaway was pulled back.

On the Col de Spandelles a selection formed containing Sepp Kuss, Primož Roglič, Jonas Vingegaard, Wilco Kelderman, Robert Gesink (Jumbo-Visma); Juan Ayuso, Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates); Mikel Landa, Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious); Aleksandr Vlasov, Cian Uijtdebroeks, Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-Hansgrohe); Enric Mas, Einer Rubio (Movistar); Lenny Martinez, Michael Storer (Groupama-FDJ); Max Poole (DSM-Firmenich); Steff Cras (TotalEnergies), David de la Cruz (Astana Qazaqstan); Juan Pedro Lopez (Lidl-Trek); Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost).

This group now contained the entire Vuelta general classification competition sans Evenepoel and Almeida, as Storer made another attack to go over the summit solo, and Vingegaard claimed a four-second bonus.

Behind them, the embers of Evenepoel’s GC effort were extinguished as he languished 7:20 behind with 40km remaining.

Now it was for Jumbo-Visma to police an orderly approach to the base of the Tourmalet, with the pace whittling the lead group down to an elite 16 riders.

Jumbo-Visma were solidly in control with four riders in the lead group on the Tourmalet’s lower slopes and seemed assured to be candidates for stage victory alongside the overall race win.

Hugh Carthy, Santiago Buitrago and Juan Pedro Lopez found themselves dropped across the first half of the climb and Vingegaard then began to make a series of attacks at 7.6km remaining.

A second attack proved enough to break the elastic and left a chase group of five behind him containing Kuss, Roglič, Mas, Ayuso and Uijtdebroeks.

Mas’ counterattack came with 5.5km remaining, 40 seconds behind Jonas Vingegaard, as the GC battle and stage finale began and Jumbo-Visma set the scene for a dominant display.

The Spaniard couldn’t ditch Kuss or Roglič, and lost a handful of seconds in the dash to the finish, coming sixth at 40 seconds behind Ayuso and Uijtdebroeks.