2018 Vuelta a España Stage 10 Results & Recap
Stage 10 of the 2018 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
Viviani makes it two
By Clara Beard
Elia Viviani showed he is clearly the strongest sprinter at this year’s Vuelta a Espana. The Italian champion out-sprinted Peter Sagan (BORA-Hansgrohe) and Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo) without a problem, claiming his second win of the race.
“I think it’s one of the best lead-outs we’ve done all year, maybe the best one,” Viviani said. “We were coming from two sprints that didn’t work for us: we were not in a position to sprint against Valverde (stage 8) and we did a mistake when I finished third (stage 6). Here, everything went perfect, from all the guys. It’s easy to train for the sprints but then it’s difficult to apply it in race. Michael (Morkov) is the one who decides when we go, and then it sets the timing for Saba (Fabio Sabatini) and for me, with the idea to make me go as late as possible. Today, I sprinted from 150-170m to go. If I have the legs, it’s impossible to lose in those conditions. I always dreamt of winning as many Grand Tour stages as possible. Now I have five at the Giro and two at La Vuelta and I want to enjoy my perfect train to win more until the end of La Vuelta. There are three more sprint stages I think and I want to win in Madrid but we’ll also have to see if I can survive on stage 20.”
After the 177 kilometre pan flat stage, Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) is still in the red jersey by one second ahead of Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and 14 seconds in front of Nairo Quintana (Movistar).
“Things went relatively straight forward until the end,” Yates said. “Then I must have hit something on the side of the road, I punctured twice so it made things a bit nervous but we managed to control. From my stage win in Luintra (in 2016), I remember it was a very hot day and a hard stage on twisty roads. I expect something similar tomorrow. It was the first time I raced a Grand Tour with a focus on GC and I finished sixth. I think I’m improving every year to try and win the general classification and now we’ll see how far I can go with this red jersey.”
In the opening kilometres, Jesus Ezquerra (Burgos-BH) attacked solo and quickly built a lead of two minutes. Eventually, Tiago Machado bridged across after 30 kilometres. They were allowed a maximum of three minutes before drawn back by the sprinters’ teams about 20 kilometres to the finish.
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