An eventful time-trial at the Vuelta a Espana, Sepp Kuss has put in a big effort to maintain the red jersey, Filippo Ganna had the speed to beat the GC riders, and within the battle for the overall classification Remco Evenepoel has dealt a meaningful hit to Jonas Vingegaard and Enric Mas.
A few riders took over the hot seat early on but only momentarily as the big guns were to depart later in the day. Stefan Bissegger had an early start and so he set a decent first benchmark.
Filippo Ganna finish not too long after and as expected took over the lead of the stage. It was a convincing effort, he needed to take a big gap to have a chance of holding off the GC riders, and he did so by taking 1:19 minutes on Bissegger.
The Italian was in the hot seat but now he had his biggest challengers ahead. The other specialists were quite far from his time, the first riders finishing less than a minute slower were Aleksandr Vlasov and João Almeida, 49 and 51 seconds behind respectively.
Then came Juan Ayuso and Jonas Vingegaard, both riders who struggled in the flat time-trial, losing 1:11 and 1:18 minutes behind, sustaining loss against rivals. Primoz Roglic followed with a very strong time, the Slovenian lost only 36 seconds. Enric Mas lost 1:46 minutes, not a huge gap however.
Remco Evenepoel set the time to eye for the overall classification riders, he lost only 16 seconds to Ganna who consolidated the stage win. He has won some seconds on Primoz Roglic, but over a minute on riders such as Jonas Vingegaard and Enric Mas.
Sepp Kuss lost only 1:29 minutes at the finish, an exceptional time by the American which sees him comfortably keep the race lead, losing only 17 seconds on Marc Soler.
Results powered by FirstCycling.com