20/02/2022

Vuelta a Andalucia: Wout Poels conquers GC as Lennard Kämna wins final stage

BORA - hansgrohe climber Lennard Kämna has delivered on his goal of getting a stage win at the Vuelta a Andalucia after being the strongest off a breakaway in the final climb of the stage into Chiclana de Segura.

With a very complicated start it was expected that several riders would be going for a breakaway and that was the case. A very stirred stage, with a group of nineteen riders escaping the peloton early on in the opening climbs of the day but it was always within reach of the peloton as mainly Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team controlled the gap, with stage ambitions.

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With 73 kilometers to go the breakaway was caught as the peloton stormed through the main flat section of the stage. However with 53 kilometers as the road tilted uphill once again, attacks flew off the peloton with a very varied group with another eighteen riders, but no general classifications threat.

The race then stabilized as Bahrain let the gap grow and no-one attacked on the hardest section of the Alto de Iznatoraf. Despite some attacks at times, the breakaway remained relatively united, with riders like Covi and Sheffield who had already won stages, Buchmann and Kämna from BORA and several other quality names.

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In the final climb BORA played their cards well as both Emanuel Buchmann and Lennard Kämna attacked in turns and when the latter got a gap with 3.4 kilometers to go after a blisterring attack, no-one managed to reel him back in. Lorenzo Fortunato came close, as he and Alessandro Covi worked towards catching the German but to no success.

In the peloton there was a hard pace but no decisive move. It came down to the final meters where Simon Yates but in a dig and was the first to arrive at the finish followed by Wout Poels who sealed his overall win. The Dutchman conquered his first general classification since the Volta a Comunitat Valenciana 2016, with an impressive Cristián Rodriguez and Miguel Ángel López wrapping up the podium. Alessandro Covi won the points classification and Caja Rural's Jon Barrenetxea took the KOM classification.