17/08/2024

2024 Vuelta a Espana starts as 2023 ended, with an American in the Red Jersey! Brandon McNulty stuns with stage 1 time-trial win

UAE Team Emirates' Brandon McNulty has taken victory on the stage 1 individual time trial at the 2024 Vuelta a Espana and as such moves into the famous Red Jersey of race leader.

First man down the ramp was Euskatel-Euskadi's experienced Spaniard Luis Angel Mate, who is competing in the final Grand Tour of his career. Of the early riders to cross the finish line however, there strongest times came from the likes of Edoardo Affini (12:43), Jay Vine (12:59) and Victor Campenaerts (13:07).

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Of the GC hopefuls to start relatively early in the day, Bahrain - Victorious' Antonio Tiberi put in a very strong effort of 13:02, Team Jayco AlUla's Chris Harper clocked 13:23, Richard Carapaz 13:15, Enric Mas 13:14, Lennert Van Eetvelt 13:29 and Ben O'Connor 13:27.

Bruno Armirail, Florian Lipowitz and Mattias Skjelmose all finished under the 13 minute mark, but couldn't remove Affini from the hotseat. Mikel Landa though, would've been very disappointed with his effort of 13:40, the slowest at that point of any Red Jersey hopefuls.

By the time pre-stage favourite Joshua Tarling and the likes of Adam Yates and Cian Uijtdebroeks took to the course, the wind had noticeably picked up. Nevertheless, at the intermediate check, Tarling was fastest. By the line, the Welshman was no longer the quickest however, losing out to Affini by just .28 of a second. Yates meanwhile clocked 13:09, whilst Uijtdebroeks was 13:20 for his efforts. Finally though, Affini was unseated by the Czech national champion Mathias Vacek, with the Lidl-Trek man setting a new fastest time of 12:37.

Three of the favourites for overall glory in three weeks time will be Joao Almeida, Sepp Kuss and Primoz Roglic. Almeida sent out a big statement with his time of 12:54. Kuss meanwhile was down at 13:28. For Roglic, 12:52 was the very impressive time.

Stefan Kung clocked faster than Affini, but couldn't beat Vacek. Brandon McNulty could though, moving into the provisional lead by just 2 seconds. The last man down the ramp was the recent Olympic bronze medallist, Wout van Aert and in a thrilling finale, the Belgian narrowly missed out on the Red Jersey.