The long-suffering French experienced a holiday in the mountains. Felix Großschartner is still tenth overall.
First stage win for Romain Bardet at the Vuelta
The turbulent 14th stage of the Tour of Spain ended on Saturday with the victory of Frenchman Romain Bardet. The 30-year-old, who has been unlucky so often, won the 165.7 kilometers from Don Benito to Pico Villuercas solo, 44 seconds ahead of the Spaniard Jesús Herrada von Cofidis.
The Belgian Alpecin-Fenix team was lucky in the accident: Around 35 kilometers from the finish, the Australian Jay Vine tried to push off his hand again after a conversation with his sports director, but came too close to the car and landed hard the asphalt. At least he was able to continue, which was not entirely unimportant for the member of an 18-person escape group – after all, Vine finished third, at the same time as Herrada.
The team only lost Upper Austrian Tobias Bayer in a fall on Thursday, and the 21-year-old ended up in the hospital with whiplash.
And another day in red: Odd Christian Eiking rewards himself
Not much changed in the overall standings, although the leading Odd Christian Eiking (NOR / Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert) lost 20 seconds to the Slovenian Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma), but he is still 1:36 minutes ahead of the defending champion , in between is also Guillaume Martin (Cofidis), the studied philosopher from France (+58 seconds).
The Upper Austrian Bora-hansgrohe professional Felix Großschartner finished 22nd in the mountain stage with two ratings in the highest category and thus remains tenth in the classification (+5: 31 minutes).
On Sunday, it's back to the mountains: The 197.5 kilometers from Navalmoral de la Mata to El Barraco bring four mountain ratings, including two in the first category, with a total of 53.1 kilometers of climbs.
