Wout Poels claims stage 2 and surges into race lead in Andalucia

Wout Poels stole Chris Froome’s spotlight on the Vuelta a Andalucia, winning stage 2 atop the Alto de Allanadas and taking the overall lead.

The Dutchman reached the uphill finish just ahead of Luis Leon Sanchez and Tim Wellens while Froome came across in seventh place, 27 seconds behind his teammate.

Team Sky, Astana and Movistar worked hard to bring back a stage-long breakaway that contained Diego Rubio (Burgos-BH), Alvaro Cuadros (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Przemyslaw Kasperkiewicz (Delko Marselle Provence KTM), Alexis Gougeard (Ag2r La Mondiale), Pascal Eenkhoorn (LottoNL-Jumbo), Aaron Verwilst (Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Sho Hatsuyama (Nippo-Vini Fantini), Jeroen Meijers (Roompot-Nederlandse Loterij) and Enrique Sanz (Euskadi-Murias).

The numbers in the front group slowly dwindled as the pace of the peloton and gradient of the terrain increased, leaving Rubio the final rider to be caught in the final 3km despite having a one minute lead just a kilometre before.

This kicked off a series of attacks from Jakob Fuglsang (Astana), Mikel Landa (Movistar) and Wellens, which Poels was able to cover and counter although he was pegged back. However, he bided his time and just under the 300m to go mark attacked again, and none of his rivals were able to follow suit.

“I was waiting for a good moment to attack when I bridged to Tim Wellens, and then everybody came back together”, said Poels.

“Then with 300m to go I thought I had to go full-on now as it wasn’t that steep, but I had enough speed to win. I was not happy how I started the season in Valencia, but I did some good training afterwards and was happier with my performance here.

“The next couple of days are flatter so it will be important not to lose any seconds ahead of Sunday’s TT.”

Vuelta a Andalucia 2018 – stage 2 results (Otura – La Guardia de Jaén):

General classification after stage 2: