Key Takeaways: Vuelta a España Stage 14

Breaking down how a transition stage created an upset victory & how a sprinter could win the KOM Jersey

Kaden Groves won a head-to-head drag race over Wout van Aert after navigating a hard day of racing through the mountainous terrain of Castile and León. With Van Aert’s Visma-Lease a Bike sitting on the front all day to control and reel in the strong early breakaway and attempt to shake their sprint rivals loose, Groves and his Alpecin-Deceuninck leadout were able to hide in the draft. This passive riding allowed them to get up and over the climbs largely intact and come into the final few kilometers with a strong leadout that perfectly positioned Groves and delivered him to the impressive stage victory.

The top of the General Classification went completely unchanged, as the top GC contenders all cruised in without trouble as they attempted to recover from yesterday’s explosive effort and prepare for tomorrow’s brutal stage. Even a late Primož Roglič flat tire failed to shake things up, with the current favorite for the overall victory seamlessly getting a bike from a teammate and getting back into the peloton to avoid any potential time losses.

Stage Top Five
1) Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +0
2) Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) +0
3) Corbin Strong (Israel-Premier Tech) +0
4) Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) +0
5) Pau Miquel (Equipo Kern Pharma) +0

Green Jersey Top Three
1) Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike)-291pts
2) Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck)-182pts
3) Harold Tejada (Astana Qazaqstan)-95pts

KOM Jersey Standings
1) Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike)-46pts
2) Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates)-23pts
3) Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates)-23pts

Current GC Top Five
1) Ben O'Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) +0
2) Primož Roglič (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +1’21
3) Enric Mas (Movistar) +3’01
4) Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) +3’13
5) Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step) +3’20

Stage 14 Race Notebook

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136km-38.6km: After a strong breakaway group gets clear early in the stage, Visma-Lease a Bike gets to the front to keep the gap close to ensure that Wout van Aert can contest the stage. The move never gets more than just over a two-minute advantage.

19.4km: On the day’s final climb, Visma successfully reels in the remnants of the move, an incredibly strong Jhonatan Narváez. They are also attempting to drop Van Aert’s sprint rival Kaden Groves, but with lightweight climbers like Steven Kruijswijk and Cian Uijtdebroeks on the front, they aren’t able to generate enough raw watts to drop bigger, stronger riders on the mild 4% slope.

16.5km: At the top of the climb, with the group still surprisingly large, Van Aert bursts off the front to take the KOM points, which signals he is serious about building on his KOM Jersey lead.

14.2km: On the routine descent to the finish, Primož Roglič suffers near disaster when he has a flat tire. However, due to the heads-up of Roglič’s Red Bull-Bora teammate Dani Martínez, who has the presence of mind (and direction from the team) to stay directly behind Roglič to assist him if he has a mechanical issue, Roglič is able to pull over, grab Martínez’s bike and get on his way.

3.3km: Due to some daredevil descending and the help of his team, nearly all of whom dropped back to pace him, Roglič gets back into the group as Groves’ Alpecin-Deceuninck team, which has made it over the climbs nearly fully intact, sets up their leadout.

600m: Coming through the final corner, Van Aert is slightly out of position and loses the wheel of Groves, who is on the wheel of his leadout.

450m: Van Aert, after a brief acceleration, gets back to Groves’ wheel, but has had to eat significant wind and burn precious energy at a key moment to do so.

175m: Groves launches his sprint off the wheel of his Alpecin teammate as Van Aert follows his every move.

100m: Van Aert comes out of Groves’ wheel with incredible speed as both riders begin to significantly distance everyone in their wheel

50m: Van Aert’s jump is so fast that he comes around Groves and appears to have the stage win in his sights with only a few meters remaining.

Finish: However, inside just the final few meters, Groves storms past Van Aert to win the stage and seal a massive upset.

Three Key Takeaways

1) Kaden Groves & Alpecin-Deceuninck Capitalized on Their Underdog Status: On a day when Wout van Aert was the heavy favorite due to a course almost perfectly suited to him and the general belief that the multiple first-category climbs would be too much for Kaden Groves to clear. And, even if Groves somehow made it over, it seemed impossible that he would be able to also get his Alpecin-Deceuninck leadout over the climbs with him and outsprint Van Aert on a slightly uphill drag to the line after such a hard day.

• But, like Hannibal and his troops crossing the Alps, Groves made it over the climbs with his Alpecin-Deceuninck team. And, their underdog status ended up being positive since their sprint rivals, Visma-Lease a Bike, burned their entire team, controlling the breakaway and (unsuccessfully) attempting to put Alpecin under pressure.

  • This left Van Aert isolated and slightly out of position, while Alpecin was able to take control at the front and perfectly positioned Groves for the final sprint.

• This win has yet again highlighted Groves’ impressive mix of speed and ability to handle difficult racing, which shows why he is the perfect modern Grand Tour sprinter.

  • In just the 2023 and 2024 seasons, Groves has racked up six Grand Tour stage wins, which is more than Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel combined over the same period and only just behind his Alpecin teammate, Jasper Philipsen’s haul of seven Grand Tour stage wins.

    • The fact the two sprinters who have won the most Grand Tour stages in the last two seasons are on the same team is a testament to Alpecin’s ability to evaluate and develop sprint talent.

2) Visma-Lease a Bike’s Ultra-Conservative Strategy May Have Cost Van Aert the Stage, But It Has Set Him up for a Historic Jersey Double: While Alpecin and Groves sat back and enjoyed the draft on the high-speed climbs, the team of their biggest sprint rival, Visma-Lease a Bike, took up the task of parking their team on reel the front to control the breakaway in an effort to deliver Van Aert the stage win. In retrospect, this massive dichotomy in how the teams experienced the stage likely ended up being the difference between winning and losing the stage.

• With this in mind, it is somewhat surprising that Visma decided to control the peloton without question instead of attempting to call Alpecin’s bluff by sitting back as the gap to the break went out, or sending Van Aert into the breakaway.

• After all, with the gradients on the climbs being so mild and with their team built around GC support on the hardest mountain stages, they were always going to struggle to put out enough raw power to thin down the group and distance Groves on the high-speed final climb.

  • On the flip side, by keeping Van Aert tucked in the peloton, instead of out in the breakaway, they ensured Groves could only take back three points in the Green Jersey Classification and allowed Van Aert to take maximum KOM points on the final climb while keeping him fresh to chase more Sprint and KOM points tomorrow.

    • Perhaps the promise of these near-guaranteed points outweighed a more high-risk move.

      • For example, if they had let the breakaway ride clear, Van Aert could have missed out on the KOM points. If he had gone into the breakaway, Van Aert may have been caught and dropped by the peloton on the final climb, which would have allowed Groves to take back 20 points and re-open the battle for the Green Jersey.

3) Primož Roglič’s Late Mechanical Highlights the Focus & Organization Behind the Scenes at His Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe Team: Despite looking like everything was falling into place on Stage 13, Primož Roglič’s career-long spell of bad luck attempted to rear its head yet again when he suffered a flat tire at the worst possible time on the descent into the finish. However, the extremely well-oiled Red Bull-Bora machine was prepared for this and had Dani Martínez, a rider with the same size bike as Roglič, riding behind him just in case he needed a new bike.

• This smooth bike change, and the phalanx of teammates that dropped back to help, highlighted just how focused and on the same page Red Bull-Bora is heading into the final week of this Vuelta.

  • Contrast this with the Decathlon-AG2R team of Ben O’Connor, who left the current race leader isolated on yesterday’s final climb so that his teammate Felix Gall could chase his own GC position.

    • While the benefits of drafting were extremely minimal on yesterday’s steep climb, Roglič’s incident today shows us just how important it is for a GC contender to always have a teammate around them in case of a mechanical issue.

Stage 15 Preview

Tomorrow’s stage features four categorized climbs and 3,800m/12,500ft of vertical gain, but everyone will have their eyes on the massive final climb to Cuiti Negru, nestled high in the mountains of Asturias.

• It looks imposing at 19 kilometers long with a 7.1% average gradient, but looking deeper, we can see that the final three kilometers rip up at an average of 13%.

  • After 16 kilometers of climbing, these final kilometers will strip away the noise and expose who is truly the strongest rider in this Vuelta, and who doesn’t have the fitness to compete for the overall win.

• The mild parcours in the first half of the stage and the fact that Red Bull-Bora will likely have noticed Roglič performs best after a relatively easy day of racing suggests the situation is ripe for a successful breakaway.

• Prediction: Mauro Schmid (+8000) wins the stage after riding clear of the rest of the early breakaway while Primož Roglič yet again decimates the GC field as he finally takes the race lead from Ben O’Connor and adds to his lead on the best of the rest.