2023 Vuelta a España Stage 15 Results & Recap
Stage 15 of the 2023 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
Costa wins stage 15
Rui Costa (ICW) won stage 15 of the Vuelta a Espana after perfectly timing his sprint out of a three-man breakaway to claim his first Vuelta stage win. Lennard Kämna (BOH) took second after coming back from a crash in the final kilometres. Santiago Buitrago (TBV) was third ahead of a chase group containing Remco Evenepoel (SOQ), that was right on the trio's heels in the finale.
"I believed in myself," Costa said. "The season started very well for me and now winning a stage of La Vuelta is very important for me and for the team. I’m very very happy. I worked very hard to prepare for the Tour but things didn’t turn our way with the team, it was a bit sad. I still felt good legs so I asked the team to let me do La Vuelta a España to try and get a stage win and now look… It’s not easy. It’s not just about winning today. It’s a lot of dedication, a lot of work that people don’t see. This is very satisfactory for me. [Crashes like Kämna’s in the final] are things that happen in races. We had already done that downhill once and I saw that he was going very fast, so I broke because I knew that if we followed his pace, we would crash. It’s a shame for him and then it was just about playing for the stage win. It went my way and I’m very happy."
Sepp Kuss (Jumbo Visma) retains his lead in the overall before the rest day, ahead of teammates Jonas Vingegaard (TJV) and Primož Roglič (TJV).
"It was another good stage by [Remco Evenepoel]," Kuss said. "I was talking to him on the startline and I told him: ‘You know, we can’t let you go in the break every day to get back all the time you lost.’ He’s still far back and he told me he’s just going for stage wins. It’s good to see. These kinds of stages, you never know how they’ll play out, but it was a really fast start, then the last two climbs there was a bit of pacing from Alpecin. They were trying to go for the stage win so the speed was high all day. It’s always like that the day before the rest day. Everybody wants to let out all the energy. I’m getting used to the overall lead little by little!"
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