2017 Vuelta a España Stage 18 Results & Recap
Stage 18 of the 2017 Vuelta a España is in the books. The final results and standings are below, followed by our recap of how the race unfolded.
Race Recap
Armée wins stage 18 of the Vuelta
The 18th day of the Vuelta a Espana brought another worthy winner to the surface, this time it was Sander Armée (Lotto Soudal) who took top honours at Santo Toribio de Liebana. The 31-year-old Belgian cracked Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) a few hundred meters from the finish and won by 31 seconds.
“It’s fantastic,” Armée said. “It's the best place to win a race. This is already my eighth year as a pro rider. I had to wait quite a long time to win a race. I came close a couple of times, I did my work for the team. At this Vuelta I got the chance to put myself in a free role and do my own race. It was the third time I was in the breakaway. I felt better and better during the stage and I just went full gas on the last climb. On the second climb I already started to attack because we had a quite a big gap over the peloton but the cooperation wasn't superb. It was way too early. Then, (Alexis) Gougeard went on the second-last climb and I jumped on his wheel. We had a small gap over some other guys, who came back on the downhill. I knew on the false flat that, if we went full gas, who was kept behind would never come back. I attacked a couple of times. (Julian) Alaphilippe was in the wheel and he said he didn't have good legs and he couldn't pull anymore, but you never now because he's a really good finisher. I knew I had to drop him and then I knew I had my chance, because in this type of finish, I can do quite well. I just did my own pace in the last kilometres.”
Lutsenko crossed the line in second while Giovanni Visconti (Bahrain - Merida) came in hot for third place.
Chris Froome (Team Sky) crossed the line more than 10 minutes later with his GC rivals, putting 21 seconds into Jorge Arcas (Movistar Team) after a late attack on the final climb.
Play by Play
It took almost 60 km for a breakaway to establish, and when it did, the escapees got up the road quickly.
The break of 20 consisted of: Julian Alaphilippe, Matteo Trentin (Quick Step), Alessandro De Marchi (BMC), Magnus Cort Nielsen (Orica-Scott), Jose Joaquin Rojas, Marc Soler (Movistar), Patrick Konrad (Bora-Hansgrohe), Clément Chevrier, Alexis Gougeard (AG2R-La Mondiale), Toms Skujins (Cannondale-Drapac), Antwan Tolhoek (LottoNL-Jumbo), Matej Mohoric (UAE Team Emirates), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana), Sander Armée (Lotto-Soudal), Giovanni Visconti (Bahrain-Merida), Jérémy Maison, Anthony Roux (FDJ), Stéphane Rossetto (Cofidis), Sergio Pardilla (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) and Aldemar Reyes (Manzana-Postobon).
The break gained a maximum advantage of 13’15”, the highest in this year’s Vuelta, before the final climb. When the road turned up, Armée shook up the breakaway leaving him with Lusenko and Alaphilippe with 10 km to go. Alaphilippe cracked after several accelarations by his companions and from there, the duo worked together until the drag race to the uphill finish.
“Today worked out perfectly in my favour,” Froome said after the stage. “It was a really tough stage, a lot of GC guys tried to attack on the penultimate climb. Once we got to that final climb, the team did a really strong pace at the bottom and I think some guys paid for their efforts from yesterday and their attacks earlier on today. Fabio (Aru) is one of the GC guys but still over 5 minutes on the classification. For us, he's not really a big threat for the overall title so I think it's more part of the fight for the top 5 and the podium spots. (Gaining 21” on Vincenzo Nibali) feels great, especially after a difficult day yesterday. It's good to bounce back again. The morale is still good, the team is still strong, and we're just looking forward to getting through these next couple days.”
Get our full coverage of the Vuelta a España and every race we cover with our mobile app! The apps have over 100 additional exclusive features, including our award-winning Time Machine feature that lets you pause/rewind/replay the entire app to sync with delayed race video, integrated Fantasy Cycling, push notifications, an integrated news feed, live GPS tracking, world-class commentary, and our animated interactive maps and profiles.
