Vuelta a Espana: Trentin makes it five for Quick-Step in Tomares

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Matteo Trentin (Quick-Step Floors) claimed his third victory of the 2017 Vuelta a España, winning the sprint in Tomares on stage 13. 

The 198.4km stage offered up only the second bunch sprint of the race so far and Trentin, who claimed his first win on stage 4 before adding a hillier stage a week later, again proved himself to be the fastest rider at this Vuelta.

Gianni Moscon (Team Sky) finished second, with Soren Kragh Andersen (Sunweb) third.

The stage was complicated by an uphill drag in the final 3km, with the road kicking up again just ahead of the flamme rouge and then again with around 600m to go. By the final few hundred meters a messy peloton was split up and strung out but Trentin, having been guided through the closing kilometers – and indeed the entire stage – by his Quick-Step Floors team, was in a perfect position and made no mistakes.

"It's amazing because I came in this race with confidence but I never expected something like this," said Trentin, who has doubled his Grand Tour stage win tally over the course of the last two weeks.

"On paper, it looked less hard, especially from three to two kilometers to the finish. But we decided to go for it full, the whole team, except of course for [David] De la Cruz. The guys were incredible, it was amazing. Everybody did his job and gave everything they had, 100 per cent. When the team is like this you have to finish off the work they do."

Quick-Step can rightly be pleased with themselves, this being their fifth stage win of this Vuelta – Julian Alaphilippe and Yves Lampaert provided the other two – and their 15th Grand Tour stage of the season after five apiece at the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France.

"For the team, the Vuelta is not finished," added Trentin. "We are betting for more."

The day, however, wasn't pure perfection for the Belgian team as their general classification rider De la Cruz dropped from fourth to fifth overall after being caught the wrong side of a split in the peloton during the finale. He finished seven seconds down on race leader Chris Froome (Team Sky) and the bulk of the overall contenders, crossing the line in a group that also contained Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha-Alpecin) and Tejay Van Garderen (BMC).

Wilco Kelderman (Sunweb) takes the Spaniard's place in fourth, with Froome still leading the race by 59 seconds from Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) and Esteban Chaves (Orica-Scott) still third at 2:13.

"I was pretty sure there would be splits in the final - that was the reason for me to stay up front," said Froome. "I was more excited to see where Moscon was in the finish. He did such a great job looking after me in the final, I said to him in the last k 'go, go, go - try to get the stage'. I think if he wasn't doing so much work for me he would have had an even better chance of winning the stage."

How it unfolded

Whereas the theme at this Vuelta has been one of long, drawn-out battles for the breakaway to form, this time a group went clear in the opening kilometers with a minimum of fuss.

At first, it was a quartet, with Alexis Gougeard (AG2R-La Mondiale), Davide Villella (Cannondale-Drapac), Thomas De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal) and Arnaud Courteille (FDJ), but Alessandro De Marchi (BMC) soon bridged over to make it a quintet. But it was soon back down to four as Villella was only interested in the third-category climb after 20km, where he duly took maximum points to extend his lead in the mountains classification before dropping back to the peloton.

By that point, the break had opened up a lead of a few minutes as Quick-Step set up shop at the front of the peloton, Trentin's prowess meaning the onus rested largely on their shoulders.

And it was a largely uneventful afternoon as the peloton enjoyed a sort of active rest-day after what has been an intense first half of the Vuelta and ahead of two big mountain stages this weekend. There were sing-alongs among the Trek-Segafredo riders in the bunch, though it wasn't such a jolly affair for Omar Fraile, who vomited while on his bike before abandoning the race – leaving Dimension Data with just three riders.

Cannondale-Drapac and LottoNL-Jumbo lent a small hand but largely it was Quick-Step's Tim Declercq keeping the break on a short leash. With 50km to go, the gap was down to below two minutes, though they wouldn't fall into the trap of making the catch too soon.

In the end, the made the catch very late. The breakaway split with 20km to go, leaving just De Marchi and De Gendt out front, and De Marchi managed to stay away until 7km to go as De Gendt's hopes were ended by cramps.

Quick-Step had allowed Bora-Hansgrohe and Katusha-Alpecin to enter the fray but made sure they were back in full control in the final 5km ahead of the uphill ramps.

Niki Terpstra led them onto the first and major one as all the riders sprang out of the saddle. He pulled over just inside the 3km to go banner as Bob Jungels marked moves from Adam Hansen (Lotto Soudal) and Kragh Andersen. The road flattened out and on the next kick Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) attacked but seemed to slip a gear, and Julian Alaphilippe led Trentin into the final kilometer. The Italian was a few wheels back as the leaders came through the final right-hand bend but he soon opened his sprint, comfortably surging through the middle of Moscon and Kragh Andersen.

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