2023 Vuelta a España Stage 18 Results & Recap
Stage 18 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
Evenepoel notches another Vuelta victory
Remco Evenepoel (SOQ) took his third victory at the Vuelta a Espana, showing a proclivity for racking up stage wins ever since his bid for GC went south on Stage 13 after he lost almost 30 minutes to race leader Sepp Kuss (Jumbo Visma). The Belgian finished atop the final summit finish at La Cruz de Linares alone after dropping his breakaway companions on Cat. 1's penultimate passage.
"Today I already had a feeling in the morning that it was not gonna be for the stage win," Evenepoel said. "Actually, Sepp Kuss told me they were gonna control for the stage. I said this in the team radio. Then I mentioned I wanted to be in the breakaway to take the points on the two first climbs and then we would see the situation up the first part of Angliru. The gap was not big enough. I could keep it around 1’30’’ for some time but once it got steeper, I ran out of energy. Together with my strong teammate Mattia Cattaneo, we made a break the two of us almost all the time. It wasn’t easy at all but I think we did well, scoring the points, and tomorrow we try to secure the jersey."
After a controversial stage on the Angliru that saw Primož Roglič (TJV) and Jonas Vingegaard (TJV) ride away from their race leader and teammate Sepp Kuss to put him in danger of losing the red jersey to Vingegaard - Jumbo Visma chose to ride in defense of Kuss today, finishing with the American to all but seal his overall victory which will be the biggest result of his career.
"First of all, the guys did a really great job, pulling the whole day and then on the last two laps on this finishing climb, Jan [Tratnik] came back and he was riding super for us and then Jonas [Vingegaard] did a really good pace from the bottom," Kuss said at the end of the stage. "I was a little bit scared because he’s so strong! He really rode super for me. Today we rode a more defensive tactic. Within the team and within the three of us, there were the tactics we had agreed on for the Angliru, and then what strategy we wanted to follow through after that stage. It’s always changing and there are always some mistakes here and there but it’s always within measure. [Winning La Vuelta] is getting closer. Tomorrow is definitely an easier stage but we have to stay focused and then for stage 20, it will be a really long and hard stage. We’re out of the big mountains but there’s always some tough ones."\n
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.
