Lennard Kamna soloed to victory on stage nine of the Vuelta a Espana to complete his set of wins in Grand Tours on Sunday as Sepp Kuss retained the overall leader’s red jersey.
The hilly 184km stage from Cartagena had its general classification timings taken 2km from the official finish after earlier rain had left mud on the road surface.
Kamna (Bora-hansgrohe) managed to join a breakaway group that was never seriously chased down by the peloton.
He then picked his moment to roared away on his own on the twisty and steep climb to Collado de la Cruz de Caravaca with Matteo Sobrero (Jayco-Alula) second, 13 seconds back, and Chris Hamilton of the DSM-Firmenich team in third place.
“I’m super happy. I worked really hard the last couple of months,” Kamna said. “The climb was always going up and down and it was hard to find the moment to drop the others.
“I went totally over my limit for two minutes and then it was just a fight to the finish.”
It was all fairly anti-climactic, however, because of the weather issues which meant the general classification timings were taken just over 2km from the line with the final steep sections reduced to a gentle cruise home.
There was some movement in the GC, however, with Primoz Roglic putting in a rapid acceleration to gain a couple of seconds at the ‘finish’ which only he appeared to know the location of.
Roglic gained two seconds on GC rivals Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep), Enric Mas (Movistar), Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates), and team mate Jonas Vingegaard, moving up one place to sixth overall while Evenepoel jumped up to fourth ahead of Mikel Landa and Wout Poels who both struggled and dropped back.
Ahead of Monday’s rest day, Kuss still leads overall by 43 seconds from UAE Team Emirates rider Marc Soler.
?️?♂️ Una etapa completamente LOCA desde el 1er kilómetros y un final durísimo. ¡Revive los mejores momentos de la etapa 7⃣ en 1 minuto!
Have you already recovered from today's epic stage? Re-live the best moments from stage 6⃣ in 1 minute!#LaVuelta23 @gorouvy pic.twitter.com/uUmqwvs1ur
— La Vuelta (@lavuelta) September 3, 2023
