Two hundred and fifteen kilometres of not-flat
Nobody knew what stage 2 was. The longest day of the race, out of Monaco and up through the Alpes-Maritimes into Provence, it had only two categorised climbs — Châteauneuf-Grasse and the Col de Saint-Andrieu — but 3,000 metres of climbing all the same, and a finish in Manosque that the road book described as flat and the riders described as an uncategorised ramp after a technical run-in. Sprinters’ stage? Puncheurs’ stage? Van Aert stage? The break that went — Koen Bouwman, Diego Uriarte, Sinuhé Fernández and, interestingly, Ethan Hayter, the man beaten by 0.09 seconds in Monaco — clearly thought it was a day for the brave.
Hayter’s afternoon in virtual red
Hayter had come to make something of it. He dropped his companions and went solo with 49 km to go, took six bonus seconds at the intermediate sprint in Gréoux-les-Bains, and for a while was the virtual leader of the Vuelta — the nine hundredths of Saturday erased and then some. It was a lovely idea and Visma–Lease a Bike weren’t having it. They lifted the pace, brought him back with 34 km left, and the race arrived at Manosque all together, which was exactly the situation the two most aggressive riders in the peloton had been waiting for.
Van Aert goes, Pogačar goes with him
Out of one of the hairpins in the last two kilometres, Wout van Aert attacked. Pogačar, in red, went after him instantly, and for a few hundred metres the Vuelta had its dream image: the two of them clear together, in the first road stage, with the line in sight. Alessandro Romele bridged across; nobody cooperated; and the bunch, driven by teams with sprinters to protect, closed it down under the flamme rouge. That should have been the story. Then Finn Fisher-Black opened the sprint on the ramp, Mads Pedersen went for it on the gradient — and Matthew Brennan came past all of them so hard the gap opened before the line and kept opening. Pau Miquel took second for Bahrain Victorious, Pogačar third, Pedersen fourth, Hugo Hofstetter fifth. The kid put his arms up in Manosque with the world champion in his slipstream.
Who is Matthew Brennan
Twenty-one, from Yorkshire, and on the evidence of this season already the most exciting fast man in the sport: an uphill sprinter who climbs, a classics rider who sprints, and now a Grand Tour stage winner on the first road stage he has ever ridden in one. The Visma tactics were layered — Van Aert attacking, Brennan waiting, one of them bound to profit either way — and Brennan’s part was executed with the calm of a rider ten years older. He takes the white jersey, sits third overall at ten seconds, and has a team-mate in second. Visma came to this race without Vingegaard and may have the two most dangerous riders in it anyway.
The GC after two days
Pogačar, then Van Aert at 9 seconds and Brennan at 10 — a Slovenian and two Visma riders, with Léo Bisiaux and Fisher-Black rounding out a top five that will look nothing like this after Tuesday. The pure climbers stayed out of trouble and lost nothing more; Roglič is still at 20 seconds. Tomorrow the race leaves the Riviera for the Pyrenees: Gruissan to Font-Romeu, 27 sustained kilometres of climbing to the first mountain finish. The kid won’t win that one. The question is whether anyone can stop the man who finished behind him today.
In the grupetto
Two hundred and fifteen kilometres is a long way to ride for a sprint you don’t win, and the pure sprinters found out today what this Vuelta thinks of them: ten summit finishes, and the “flat” days have ramps at the end. The autobus’s thanks go to Sinuhé Fernández and Koen Bouwman, who did the honest hours at the front so that Hayter could dream, and to the Kern Pharma and NSN riders who will spend three weeks making the breakaways that make these stages worth watching.
Moral of the story
Van Aert and Pogačar tried to win the stage by being the two strongest riders in the race, and lost it to a 21-year-old who understood that on a ramp like Manosque’s the strongest rider is the one who has done the least. The grupetto’s moral: an attack that doesn’t stick is a lead-out for someone, so make sure it’s your team-mate. Visma got that right. Brennan got everything right. Pogačar got third and kept red, which he’d probably tell you is the only line that matters.
