The top sprinter's bike struck 1,300 meters from the finish line. His driver from France thanked him with the victory.
Oh dear: as if Fabio Jakobsen had foreseen the misfortune
The air shimmered in Extremadura, which the Vuelta crossed on Friday on the 13th stage. The longest section of the 76th Tour of Spain led at 36 degrees in the shade over 203.7 kilometers, mostly flat and treeless, and after the drag of the last and before that of the following days, the remaining 165 drivers allowed themselves a correspondingly relaxed day.
The Upper Austrian Tobias Bayer could no longer be there, his severe fall on Thursday gave the 21-year-old Upper Austrian from the Alpecin-Fenix team a night in the hospital for observation. The diagnosis: whiplash syndrome, better known as whiplash.
On Friday morning the German road champion Maximilian Schachmann gave up voluntarily, the Bora-hansgrohe teammate of Felix Großschartner and Patrick Gamper looked in vain for his form. “I suffered a lot in the first few days, but I was still hoping that my form would get better. Unfortunately, that did not happen. The Vuelta was a big goal in my season this year and to race here in bad shape is very disappointing. “
By the way, Matthias Brändle from Vorarlberg also had to take a break, the 31-year-old Hohenemser from Team Israel suffered three broken ribs in a fall on the Tour Poitou-Charentes en Nouvelle Aquitaine on Tuesday, and his shoulder was also damaged.
In the glowing furnace: The field of the Vuelta on Friday
Bad luck for Fabio Jakobsen
Three runaways were allowed to drive in front of the field at 1:30 minutes on Friday afternoon and sweat. 60 kilometers from the finish, some men in the main field played a joke and accelerated from 31 to 65 kilometers per hour in order to blow up the field and annoy the sprinter teams.
Five kilometers later the frenzy was over due to a lack of agreement and the field closed again. But the outliers were only 20 seconds ahead, the chance to catch up with them, but nobody wanted to hurt themselves. 28 kilometers from the finish, the trio was at the end of their strength and was swallowed up by the peloton.
So in the end, as planned, there was a mass sprint – but surprisingly not the third stage success of the Dutchman Fabio Jakobsen, who pedaled harder than ever after his terrible fall on the Tour of Poland about a year ago. Because Jakobsen had a defect 1,300 meters before the finish line, and so his colleagues from Deceuninck-Quick Step had to fix it. And the Frenchman Florian Sénéchal, who usually works as a starter, celebrated the greatest success of his career.
“Everything was done for Fabio, and then all of a sudden he had this technical problem. So I just cut everything out.” For Florian Sénéchal, the first victory at a Grand Tour was “simply crazy. I was waiting the whole time for Alberto Dainese to pass, but he just didn't come.”
In the overall standings, the Norwegian Odd Christian Eiking (Intermarché – Wanty-Gobert) continues, the Slovenian defending champion Primoz Roglic is third and Felix Großschartner is tenth.
The next climbing tour
On Saturday there will be another mountain stage for a change, the 165.7 kilometers from Don Benito to Pico Villuercas bring a mountain classification of the first category (Puerto Collado de Ballesteros / 2.8 kilometers with an average of 14 and up to 20 percent gradient) and the 14th , 5 kilometer long final (6.2 percent and up to 15). And probably the next attempt by Primoz Roglic to approach the red jersey again.
Rewarded flexibility: Florian Sénéchal (28)
