2018 Vuelta a España Stage 12 Results & Recap
Stage 12 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
Geniez wins out of breakaway
Alexandre Geniez (AG2R-La Mondiale) took victory in Mañon today at the Vuelta a Espana. The French breakaway specialist broke away early with 17 riders, spent the day in the front group and played his cards right to overcome Dylan Van Baarle (Team Sky) and Mark Padun (Bahrain-Merida) for his third career win in the Spanish race.
“La Vuelta is a special race, at the end of the season,” Geniez said. “It’s different than the Giro where only two breakaways had the chance to fight for victory. Here, there are more opportunities and I think my successes here (3 stage wins at La Vuelta) also come from the fact I recover well for the end of the season. I didn’t plan to be at the front. I thought Bora would control the stage for Sagan. And then we saw Formolo attack, there were about 15 riders at the front so I thought I had to go. We worked well together to quickly open a gap. Nibali was the main figure at the front, everybody was looking at him. Then, I had to be careful when attacks started. I wanted to wait for the sprint because I figured it was my best chance. The team is having a great start of La Vuelta. Tony (Gallopin) is still in a good position on GC and we’ll keep going until Madrid.”
Jesus Herrada (Cofidis) also benefited from the long 181.5km day in the breakaway, riding himself into the red jersey and finishing nine minutes ahead of Simon Yates and currently leads the race by 3 minutes and 22 seconds in front of the British rider.
“One of the goals today who was to try and win some minutes,” Herrada said. “I already had this in my mind for a few days. I was mainly thinking about the stage win but since I couldn’t get it the red jersey was a secondary goal and I’m very happy in the end. I couldn’t fight for the victory because it was a very strong breakaway. I’ve been going hard for a few days. Now we’ll try to keep the jersey as long as possible. Madrid is still far and we’ll have to go day by day. The third week is very hard. I was moved when I crossed the line. I thought about all the work I put in, about my friends, my family… And it’s an honour to be the second rider from Cuenca (after Luis Ocaña) to wear this jersey.”
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