2019 Vuelta a España Stage 1 Results & Recap
Stage 1 of the 2019 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
Astana claim opening team time trial
Astana won the opening team time trial at the Vuelta a Espana in dominant fashion today, claiming victory ahead of Deceuninck-QuickStep by two seconds on the 13.4 km course through the salt marshes of Torrevieja. The team’s time of 14:51 put Miguel Angel Lopez into the leader’s jersey.
Deceuninck-QuickStep challenged the Kazakh team through the intermediate checkpoint, but couldn’t overthrow their domination and had to be content with second, but still in a good position before the first week begins. Team Sunweb also had a good performance to take third place, five seconds back.
The pre-race favorites, Jumbo Visma, didn’t have the same fortune, however. After losing American Sepp Kuss to an early mechanical, some water on the road, right before a corner and the intermediate checkpoint, took out most of the squad and their opportunity to stamp authority over the start of this year’s race. The Dutch power squad tried to recover, but could only muster a 41 second loss to Astana, which isn’t good news for Primoz Roglic, the team’s hope for a podium in Madrid.
In the early portion of the race, EF Education First had the hot seat, clocking in at 14:58. They would eventually drop to fourth after the performances by Astana, Deceuninck-QuickStep and Team Sunweb.
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.
