Vuelta a San Juan: Gaviria wins opening stage in Pocito

Fernando Gaviria won the opening stage of the Vuelta a San Juan Sunday with a perfect leadout from his Quick-Step Floors team, which watched as other squads fought for the front inside the final kilometre and then dropped the Colombian sprinter off with 200 metres to go. Gaviria took care of business form there, easily distancing the competition at the line. Niccolo Bonifazio (Bahrain-Merida) was second, with Bora-Hansgroh's Matteo Pelucchi in third.

"The sprint was very fast and very complicated because in the final kilometres were a lot of teams that wanted to win, so it was very complicated to try to win this stage," Gaviria said in the post-race press conference. "I was lucky because I have a very strong team, a very big team, and we’ve beaten the other teams in the same conditions, so the sprint was very beautiful and also the victory was very beautiful."

The field brought the day’s breakaway back with 19km to go and then swept up any further breakaway attempts as teams fought for supremacy over the final 174.km closing circuit.

With two kilometres to go, Bora-Hansgrohe came forward to set up the sprint for Pelucchi, but they weren’t the only team with designs on the stage. UnitedHealthcare briefly shot to to the front with several riders, then it was Lotto Soudal’s turn inside the final kilometre.

But all of the efforts were for naught as Quick-Step was simply biding their time before launching their Colombian speedster to the line. Gaviria said he had only two teammates working for him on the stage, and they needed to time the lead out perfectly to overcome the other teams' superior numbers.

"We have one less number of members of our team to try for me to win," he said. "Because I only had [Iljo] Keisse and [Max] Richeze. They were only ones who were working for me today. The other guys on the team we are taking care of to try and do something in the general classification. So we can’t keep our number of riders against the other teams, because they have superiority in numbers."

How it unfolded

The opening stage of the 2018 Vuelta a San Juan certainly looked on paper like one for the sprinters. The 148.9km stage from the San Juan city center to Pocito included two intermediate sprints with time bonuses of three, two and one second up for grabs. The first sprint came 21.1km into the day, and the second came at 96.7km. Despite the stage’s mostly flat profile, it offered one KOM at 71.2km. The stage ended with three 17.4km circuits.

The day started off on a down note as the race announced Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) would not take the start because he was suffering from ahigh fever. The big seemed to be going through the team as Mark Padun dropped out during the stage.

In the early kilometres outside of San Juan a breakaway of three sneaked away that included Pablo Anchieri (Uruguay), Daniel Juarez (Asociacion Civil Mardan) and Adrian Richeze (A.C.A. Virgen De Fatima).

The trio made it to the first sprint, where Anchieri took the maximum points ahead of Richeze and Juarez. They were soon joined by Duilio Ramos (Argentina), Victor Olivares (Chile), Juan Melivilo (Municipalidad de Pocito) and Facundo Cattapan (Municipalidad de Rawson) to form a new led group of seven.

The leaders made it to the KOM with their lead intact, and Juarez took the maximum points ahead of Anchieri and Ramos, securing the first mountains jersey of the race for his Asociacion Civil Mardan team.

The seven leaders made it to second and final intermediate sprint of the day, where Richeze flew past Cattapan at the line to take the win and the three bonus seconds. Juarez was third but then suffered a puncture and lost contact with the group.

With the finishing circuits closing in, Quick-Step Floors picked up the pace in the peloton and the gap started coming down. With 43km to go the gap was down to 1:30.

The pack sensed the catch was imminent, and with the leaders close they pulled back the reins a bit and spread from gutter to gutter across the road. The leaders crossed the finish line to start their second closing lap at 34km remaining with a gap of 1:32. The advantage to the leaders started t go up briefly, with Quick-Step possibly hoping to force other sprinters’ teams to help with the chase.

The gambit worked when Trek and Coldeportes - Claro threw riders into the effort, Trek no doubt hoping to set up a sprint for Giacomo Nizzolo. The gap came down precipitously from there, with the leaders holding just 15 seconds over the field with 21km to go.

With the end in sight, the leaders lost impetus and their gap was down to eight seconds just a kilometre later. The peloton made the catch at 19 kilometres.

Asociacion Civil Mardan and Coldeportes began driving the pace after the catch was made, and the field was altogether when the riders took the bell for the final 17.4km loop.

Quick-Step, Trek-Segafredo and UAE team Emirates went back the front to keep the pace high and discourage attacks, with UAE Darwin Atapuma slotting in fifth behind teammate Alexandr Riabushenko. Trek’s Greg Daniel and Quick-Step’s Alvaro Jose Hodeg did the bulk of the work to bring the group inside of 10km, but they were swarmed soon after as two riders tried to escape the bunch without success.

With 6km to go the sprint was inevitable.

Gerardo Tiviani (Munipalidad De Pocito) tried a solo move and got sme distance, but his effort was brought to an end with 5km to go as Medellin-Inter’s Oscar Sevilla and teammates went to the head of the bunch. 

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