Wout Poels glorious in gruesome day of racing in Andalucia: "In the sprint I could finish it off"

Wout Poels had been without winning since the 2019 Critérium du Dauphiné but when he wins he wins big. This saturday he took a brilliant stage win at the Vuelta a Andalucia which has also net him the race lead in a highly contested set of complicated stages. He's talked about his most recent victory after the mountainous day, where he averaged 42.4Km/h for the win.

After the stage, a satisfied Poels talked about the day he had just completed, “a nice but hard day! We had four riders up in the front the whole day and everyone worked perfectly together. In the final phase I still had good legs and followed when Lutsenko went, and in the sprint I could finish it off. Really happy with the win and another hard, last day tomorrow. So let’s see what we have left in the tank!”

After making the crucial split early in the day at the Alto del Purche, Wout Poels hit the jackpot as he once again followed the winning move with 15 kilometers to go on stage four of the Vuelta a Andalucia, following Alexey Lutsenko, collaborating with him until he was in a position to take the race lead, and then beating the Kazakh in the final sprint to take a very important win.

“After an expected hard start, we got into a 14 riders breakaway with our four riders. Chasing was strong so also those in front needed to push hard and in the last 20kms there was a big fight for the stage and GC and actually we won everything! Now we have a big objective to defend GC in tomorrow’s stage!" Said Gorazd ​​Stangelj, team DS in Spain this week.

With only one more stage to go Wout Poels is in pole position to take the overall classification of the race. It won't go without challenge, as he holds only eigth seconds to his nearest rival Miguel Ángel López and has seven riders within 21 seconds of his race lead, into a summit finish. However if any team is capable of controlling the stage it's Bahrain who's been having a brilliant performance all week long despite having a reduced lineup due to Dylan Teuns' absence.