After barren run, Wout van Aert finds oasis of success at the 2024 Vuelta a Espana with 3rd win on stage 10 from breakaway

Wout van Aert has done it again at the 2024 Vuelta a Espana, tkaing his third stage win of the Grand Tour stage 10, this time after a brilliant breakaway performance, outsprinting Quentin Pacher for the win.

With the peloton's legs rested and their minds refreshed, many riders had big hopes for today. As such, there was an almighty fight for the breakaway on the first climb of the day. The first move to get a real gap was actually on the descent after the first climb as Wout van Aert, Marc Soler and William Junior Lecerf got clear.

Although Quentin Pacher and Juri Hollmann joined the leaders, the consistent attempt of counter attacks behind was ensuring their advantage wasn't ever really getting more than 30 seconds. Finally though, with around 90km left, things started to relax and the leading quintet's advantage touched the minute mark for the first time.

Once the elastic snapped, it really snapped too and with 60km to go, the five at the front's advantage over the peloton had grown to over six minutes, with the pace completely shut down behind.

As the breakaway reached the intermediate sprint, Van Aert began to roll of the group to take the points uncontested, but instead of then regrouping, the Belgian continued his acceleration. Only Pacher was quick enough to react, with the duo suddenly around 30 seconds clear. Whilst Van Aert and Pacher were distancing their breakaway companions, EF Education - EasyPost were coming to the front of the peloton, with Richard Carapaz clearly keen to put the pressure on.

Heading into the final 10km, Van Aert and Pacher has over a minutes lead and victory was assured for one of them. With nothing coming of the EF acceleration either, the GC riders were seemingly content to wait for another day. With Van Aert by far the more renowned sprinter of the two leaders, Pacher's hopes looked slim heading into the finale. In the end, things went as expected, with Van Aert easing to the win.