Colin Stüssi wins brutal summit finish at Volta a Portugal and opens up fight for title defense
Cycling
Colin Stüssi won the first stage of the Volta a Portugal and is the new yellow jersey. The Team Vorarlberg rider responded to an attack by Jonathan Caicedo within the last 5 km and launched an attack of his own, one that nobody was able to follow. António Carvalho was the closest rival, at 27 seconds and Luís Fernandes came in at 40 seconds. Mauricio Moreira lost more than a minute and Artem Nych was even further behind, with Sabgal - Anicolor Cycling Team the big losers of the day.
Stage 1 of the Volta a Portugal saw the peloton cover 158.2 kilometers between Anadia and Miranda do Corvo, with a high finish at the Vila Nova Observatory, a 2nd category climb of 9.9 km and 8.1% average gradient, with ramps that reach 19.8%, a climb where Mauricio Moreira cracked in 2022, the only year in which the "Grandissima" passed through this climb, when Frederico Figueiredo emerged victorious from the stage.
The breakaway soon formed. First Raúl Rota went clear, with Unai Esparza joining the youngster from Rádio Popular - Paredes - Boavista. Then Samuel Boardman joined the group.
The day was uneventful until the ascent of Senhor da Serra, which preceded the final mountain climb. About 40 km from the finish, Julen Arriola-Bengoa suffered a fall that left him badly bruised, with abrasions on various parts of his body.
The breakaway seemed to be over with 26 km to go, but Raúl Rota still attacked to go solo at the top of the climb, thus becoming the first leader of the mountain classification in this Volta a Portugal. Meanwhile, Team Vorarlberg took control of the peloton, on a day when Sabgal did the job for most of the stage.
Close to the climb, it was Emanuel Duarte who suffered a mechanical problem and the escape was neutralized for good at the base of the climb to the Vila Nova Observatory. And it was at the start of the climb that Julien Amezqueta, of Iles Balears Arabay Cycling, launched an attack, while Frederico Figueiredo pulled ahead of the group of favorites, hinting that he didn't really have any ambitions in the overall.
Little by little, the first riders from the prologue were falling behind, especially the yellow jersey, Rafael Reis. As a result, Mauricio Moreira became the virtual leader of the race. And 4.8 km from the finish, it was Jonathan Caicedo who attacked, with a direct response from Colin Stüssi, while Sabgal closed the gap at pace.
The Swiss rider then launched a counter-attack, forcing a direct response from Mauricio Moreira, who couldn't find the explosiveness, while Artem Nych and Figueiredo lost contact. Stüssi distanced himself while Jon Aguirre jumped out of the peloton to try and bridge the gap to the defending Volta a Portugal champion.
Three kilometers from the finish line, Caicedo, Delio Fernández and Henrique Casimiro lost contact, while Luís Fernandes attacked with Diego Camargo, joined by António Carvalho. Stüssi had a 30-second lead, while António Carvalho was alone with Fernandes in pursuit. Meanwhile, Mauricio Moreira broke down completely in the last 2 kilometers and António Carvalho managed to distance himself from the Credibom/ LA Alumínios / MarcosCar man. Stussi won with a considerable gap over his rivals on what may be the most important stage of the race.
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- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024