We’re nine stages into the 2024 Vuelta a España, and it’s once again shaping up to be one of the most exciting races of the season. Here’s a quick rundown of all that’s gone down so far and what to expect in the Spanish grand tour’s second week:
Who’s Winning La Vuelta a España?
After nine stages, Australia’s Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) wears the red jersey as the Vuelta’s overall leader. The 28-year-old–who’s never finished better than fourth in a grand tour–jumped to the top of the General Classification after winning Stage 6 from a long breakaway, putting over six minutes into a group containing most of the Vuelta’s pre-race favorites.
The Australian lost some time to the men chasing near the end of the week, but still heads into the Vuelta’s first Rest Day, leading Slovenia’s Primož Roglič (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) by 3:53 and Ecuador’s Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) by 4:32. The rest of the top-10 is clustered within two minutes of Carapaz, setting things up for a fantastic GC battle in the Vuelta’s second week.
Belgium’s Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) wears the green jersey as the leader of the Vuetla’s Points Classification, and Great Britain’s Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) wears the polka dot jersey as the leader of the Vuelta’s King of the Mountains Classification. Germany’s Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) wears the white jersey as the Vuelta’s current Best Young Rider.
Key Moments and Surprises of the First Week of La Vuelta
The 2024 Vuelta a España began the way the 2023 Vuelta a España ended: with an American pulling on the red jersey as the Vuelta’s General Classification leader. Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) won the 12 km individual time trial from Lisbon to Oeiras on Stage 1 to follow Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike)–the defending champion–wearing the maillot rojo.
Australia’s Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) took Stage 2 in Ourém, but Belgium’s Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike)–who took third on Stage 1–finished second and took the red jersey from McNulty thanks to time bonuses earned at the finish. The Belgian then successfully defended the jersey on Stage 3, defeating Groves in Castelo Branco to take his first win since February.
After three stages in Portugal, the race returned to Spain on Stage 4, a day that also brought the Vuelta’s first summit finish–on the Category 1 climb to Pico Villuercas. Roglič won the stage, taking the red jersey from van Aert and seemingly responding to those who wondered about his form after the Slovenian crashed out of the Tour de France. The 34-year-old had no issues holding onto the jersey on Stage 5: the victory went to the Czech Republic’s Pavel Bittner (dsm-firmenich PostNL), who outsprinted van Aert and Groves in Sevilla.
But the race blew apart on Stage 6, a day that began inside a supermarket in Jerez de la Frontera. An aggressive start to the stage produced a strong breakaway, and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe overestimated its ability to keep the break’s lead in check. O’Connor–clearly in the form of his life–capitalized, dropping his companions to win the stage, putting six-and-a-half minutes into the Vuelta’s other GC contenders in the process. Fourth in this year’s Giro–and fourth in the 2021 Tour de France–the Australian ended the day in the red jersey, almost five minutes ahead of Roglič and the rest of the Vuelta’s pre-race contenders.
Stage 7 went to Van Aert, who hung with the leading group over a steep climb near the end of the stage and then easily won the sprint in Cordoba to take his second stage of the race. The first rider over the final climb, Roglič began chipping away at O’Connor’s lead by gaining a 6-second time bonus at the top.
And he took an even bigger chunk out of O’Connor’s advantage at the end of Stage 8, attacking the Australian multiple times on the Category 3 climb to the finish line atop the Sierra de Cazorla, ultimately cracking the Australian. By the end of the day–helped by the 10-second time bonus he received for winning the stage–Roglič had taken another 56 seconds out of O’Connor, a solid gain on such a short climb. And with three Category 1 ascents through the Sierra Nevada mountains on Stage 9, Roglič looked poised to do more damage.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, Yates went on the attack, in a way replicating O’Connor’s performance on Stage 6. The Briton won the stage alone in Granada, 1:39 ahead of Carapaz and 3:45 ahead of a GC group led home by O’Connor, who took four seconds back from Roglič thanks to his third-place finish.
Stage 6 Shake-Up: O’Connor’s Big Break and the Aftermath
After Stage 6, it looked as if we were heading for a repeat of last year’s Vuelta, when Kuss won Stage 6 from a long breakaway and gained several minutes on the race’s pre-race favorites in the process. At the time, it looked like Kuss was attacking as a defensive move on behalf of his teammates–Roglič and Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard. But after taking the red jersey two days later, the American never looked back, holding off his teammates (yeah, it was awkward) to become the first American to win a grand tour in ten years.
History seemed to have repeated itself on this year’s Stage 6, with O’Connor winning the stage and gaining more than six minutes on the Vuelta’s pre-race favorites. But this wasn’t a defensive move that O’Connor was making on behalf of his more-heralded teammates–it was a purely offensive attack, one made with the goal of doing exactly what it did: winning the stage and taking the red jersey in the process.
For the Australian–who’s become known as a bit of a hot head to fans of the Netflix series Unchained–it was one of the best victories of his career and a fitting gift to the French team that he’s raced for since 2021, but is leaving this coming off-season.
For Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, allowing a rider with two fourth-place grand tour finishes–most recently at May’s Giro d’Italia–to gain six-and-half-a-minutes was either an incredible display of hubris or an incredible display of tactical ineptitude–or both. To their credit, Roglič and the team played it cool after the stage–essentially telling us to wait until the end of the race to judge their tactics–but it was easy to read between the lines: while losing the red jersey was part of the team’s plan, losing it to this rider–and by this much time–wasn’t.
Roglič immediately went to work in terms of chipping into O’Connor’s advantage, gaining a handful of seconds on Stage 7 and then nearly a minute on Stage 8. But O’Connor proved Sunday that he has no plans just to roll over and give up his lead, riding valiantly through the Sierra Nevada mountains aided by Austria’s Felix Gall, who now sits eighth overall himself.
Gall’s performance underscored the fact that Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe’s biggest underestimation might not be its assessment of O’Connor, but his team. Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale has been one of the most successful teams of the 2024 season, winning 30 races so far this year. Like their plucky captain, they won’t go down without a fight.
And neither will the rest of the Vuelta’s pre-race contenders, as we saw Sunday with Yates and Carapaz taking pages out of O’Connor’s playbook to try and haul themselves back in contention. In both cases, it worked, with Yates gaining twenty places on GC in winning the stage and Carapaz gaining fifteen by finishing second. Overall, the first nine riders behind O’Connor are now separated by just 2:39. If they continue taking turns trying to blow the race apart–like Yates and Carapaz did Sunday–we’re in for a big show over the next two mountain-filled weeks of the Spanish grand tour.
Get Ready for Round Two: Climbs, Battles, and Strategy
After spending the first week of the race in Portugal and the southern part of Spain, the Vuelta heads north for the grand tour’s second week. But the riders won’t be able to ease their way into it as Stage 10 brings four categorized climbs before a finish in Baiona. Expect a breakaway to rule the day.
Stage 11 could also go to a group of opportunistic puncheurs thanks to a hilly stage consisting of three hilly circuits around the Galician town of Padrón. These two stages could be tough for one team to control, so expect to see BORA-hansgrohe and UAE Team Emirates doing their best to put pressure on O’Connor and his Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale teammates.
Three of the next four stages end with summit finishes, starting with Stage 12’s finish on the Category 1 climb to the Estacion De Montaña De Manzaneda. Stage 13 is longer and has more categorized climbs than the previous day, including another Category 1 summit finish–this time on a new climb, the Puerto de Ancares. A Category 2 ascent right before the steep final climb should make this an important day for the Vuelta’s GC contenders–and another day for Roglič to try and crack O’Connor.
The weekend brings more mountains, first with Stage 13, a long stage that takes the riders over a Category 1 summit about 16 km from the finish in Villablino. This could be yet another chance for a rider to win the stage from a breakaway as the GC contenders keep their powder before Sunday’s Stage 14, a short, intense stage that’s jammed with mountains, including a summit finish on the “Beyond Category” ascent to Cuitu Negru, a long, steep Asturian climb with pitches that hit 23-percent.
If O’Connor is destined to crack and lose minutes to his rivals, this is the climb that could do it. But if he doesn’t, and he heads into the Vuelta’s second Rest Day with most of his lead intact, he’ll have to feel pretty good about his chances of defending the red jersey all the way to Madrid.
