2024 Vuelta a España Stage 3 Results & Recap
Stage 3 of the 2024 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
WVA cleans up in Portugal
The last stage in Portugal came down to a bunch sprint. Red jersey Wout van Aert powered to victory to extend his lead in the GC. The Flemish powerhouse outgunned Kaden Groves and Jon Aberasturi.
"It’s nice to take my 10th Grand Tour victory," Van Aert said. "It’s been quite a while since I could raise my hands, and this feels really good. My plan was to use my strength and launch early but I think I surprised [Kaden Groves] going before 200 metres. It was slightly uphill but we came with a lot of speed. It was the perfect sprint for me. The confidence was quite good. Yesterday, I felt good on the stage, and today, too. It was quite hot, even warmer… The team was so strong, we had the whole race in control. They put me in the perfect position in the end. It gave me the confidence to finish it off. Unfortunately, the fun is over [he laughs]. Tomorrow, I will be happy to give the role of leader of the team to Sepp [Kuss] and Cian [Uijtdebroeks]. They’re super strong, and it’s a super hard climb. It will be the first test for the GC guys, and it will be hard for me to keep the jersey. I’ll try to enjoy it one more time."
Ibon Ruiz, Luis Ángel Maté, Unai Iribar, and Xabier Isasa attacked from the gun. The quartet raced to a 2-minute lead in no time. Then Stefan Küng, Victor Campenaerts, and Kasper Asgreen tried to jump across, but the peloton did not agree. After that, the four attackers continued to pull away from the peloton, reaching a maximum advantage of over 5 minutes.
Maté won the KOM sprint at both the Alto de Teixeira and Alto de Alpedrinha, and he now wears the polka-dot jersey.
"I’m very happy, it's a very special jersey for me," Luis Angel Maté (Euskaltel-Euskadi) said. "Six years makes for a long time [he last wore the polka-dot jersey in 2018] and they go by very quickly. It was a goal from the beginning of La Vuelta. It has cost me a lot, two days of long rides to get it. Now I hope to be able to defend it with all my strength. The mountain points were very far from each other, especially in the first stage. Yesterday I took the first two, and today was key with the 2nd-category pass. I had it marked as an objective, so the first objective was achieved. Now it's time to defend it. For me, it's a moral obligation to be in the breakaway as long as I have the strength, so if that's the case, I'll fight for it every day."
Isasa went solo inside the final 40 kilometres before he was caught 20 kilometres later.
Wout van Aert stayed in Kaden Groves’ wheel until the final 200 metres, and then he powered to a commanding victory. He thus cements his lead in the general classification.
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