Vuelta a España stage 14: Remco Evenepoel bounces back to victory atop Puerto de Belagua

Just 24 hours after a total capitulation on the Col d’Aubisque, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) bounced back in surprising fashion to win stage 14 of the Vuelta a España.

Evenepoel had been up the road with Romain Bardet (dsm-firmenich) for more than half of the stage to the Puerto de Belagua, and attacked his companion 3.9km from the top of the final climb to solo to victory, his second stage win of the race.

Read more: Remco Evenepoel and Soudal Quick-Step left shell-shocked after complete Vuelta a España collapse

Bardet took second, over a minute behind Evenepoel, whilst Lennert Van Eentvelt (Lotto Dstny) took third, holding on from the initial break.

After working hard to get in the large breakaway then went in the first hour of the stage, Evenepoel and Bardet attacked over the top of the first climb to go away together more than 80km from the finish, and were never even in much danger of being brought back.

The main GC group came in eight and half minutes down on Evenepoel, with all the favourites finishing on the same time after a tame finale for the main contenders. Sepp Kuss (Jumbo-Visma) finished safely in the group to remain in the race lead.

“Yesterday was a very difficult day, also the evening,” Evenepoel said after being in tears at the finish. “I couldn’t sleep too much, I had a very bad night, a lot of negative thoughts in my head. Today I woke up and I thought to myself ‘just go for it, make the best of it’.

“I did a recon of this stage because it’s an important stage for the GC and in the overall, it’s a super hard stage, so I did a recon of it and I knew perfectly how the climbs were, how hard they were because it was a super tough stage. It’s just super nice to take a second stage win.”

“Romain was cooperating with me, we worked well together,” he continued. “I said that I was going to do the pace on the climbs as long as he was going to ride with me on the flats, and in the end it was a bit of a guess whether he could stay on the wheel or not, but I think I can be very proud with this answer after yesterday.”

A big breakaway that quickly became only two

Starting out with 50km of flat before three big, back-to-back climbs, the start of stage 14 was fast and furious as a big fight ensued to get in the breakaway. Perhaps surprisingly, given his disintegration on stage 13, it was defending Vuelta champion Remco Evenepoel who was really leading the action, spending several kilometres up the road with Nelson Oliveira (Movistar) and continuing to attack after that duo was reeled back in.

It took a long time for the break to finally go, but Evenepoel was never far from the front of the action, and when a group of 24 finally went after 30km, the Belgian champion was in it. He was joined by a strong group of riders, including Romain Bardet (dsm-firmenich), Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) and stage 9 winner Lennard Kämna (Bora-Hansgrohe), with a few more riders bridging across from the peloton to join the group.

Happy to finally have some respite from the hectic start to the stage, the peloton let this group go and get around four minutes, but the likes of Jumbo-Visma and UAE Team Emirates were determined that the advantage wouldn’t grow much bigger than that. On the first climb, the Col Hourcère, several riders already started to struggling in the peloton, including Geraint Thomas, Egan Bernal (both Ineos Grenadiers), Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost) and Wilco Kelderman (Jumbo-Visma).

In the break, it was Mattia Cattaneo (Soudal Quick-Step) who was setting the pace on the climb, and it wasn’t just plain sailing in the lead group: the teams interested in the stage win were making it hard for the weaker riders. On the descent, Evenepoel and Bardet pushed the speed, and managed to split away from their breakaway companions with 80km to go, which quickly grew out to a 50 second advantage with no clear rider to take on the responsibility of chasing in the second group.

By the bottom of the next climb, with 60km to go, the two leaders had a minute and a half advantage, whilst the remaining breakaway started to fall apart behind them. Michael Storer (Groupama-FDJ) was the strongest behind, and closed the gap to 1:10 to the leaders.

GC rivals test the waters on penultimate climb

In the peloton behind, UAE Team Emirates had taken on much of the pacing duties, and around 6km from the top of the Puerto de Larrau, Juan Ayuso tried to dig in and test Jumbo-Visma, but the Spaniard couldn’t get away from the Dutch team’s strong trio and all remained together over the top of the climb.

On the descent and in the run-in towards the final stretch of climbing, Storer faded and soon dropped to over three and a half minutes behind the leaders, who looked to be riding towards stage victory, six minutes ahead of the GC group with 28km to go. This gap only went out as the finish approached, with the leading pair pushing hard whilst the peloton just kept things controlled, under the influence of Jumbo-Visma and Bahrain Victorious.

A waiting game before Evenepoel’s attack

With 9km to go, the leaders hit the official start of the final climb, the Puerto de Belagua, and stayed together for the first half of the climb, but it seemed to be winding up for one of the riders to attack. That rider, perhaps predictably, was Evenepoel, who accelerated away from Bardet with 3.9km to go to leave the Frenchman behind, and sail towards victory. Bardet came home in second, whilst Lennert Van Eetvelt took third as the remnants of the early breakaway crossed the line a few minutes ahead of the peloton.

Despite a few tentative accelerations from various teams, there was no real action on the GC with all the main favourites staying together in the final kilometres of the climb. Sepp Kuss remains in the race lead, with Jumbo-Visma still occupying the top three spots on GC. Evenepoel took back more than eight minutes from his 27 minute deficit after his stage 13 implosion, but it was only enough to bump him up two places on GC, still well outside of the top 10.

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