La Vuelta Ciclista a España 2024 Stage 10

August 27, 2024 The race resumes after the rest day and an incredibly long transfer back up to Galicia, tickling the border with Portugal. There are four categorized climbs on the route with a first category near the finish before the riders would plunge down to sea level to Vigo Bay. The temperatures were significantly cooler, 20C (35F) than it was in Granada on Sunday. The strategy before the race in team busses must have been centered around going in the break because it was a fight right from the start. The race was still together at the bottom of the Alto de Fonfría with 147KM to race. Wout van Aert of Visma-Lease a Bike, Marc Soler of UAE, William Junior Lecerf of T-Rex Quickstep, Juri Hollmann of Alpecin-Deceuninck and Quentin Pacher of Groupama-FDJ formed a group on the descent but their lead was stuck around 20 seconds for a long time. Alessandro De Marchi of Jayco AlUla got away with a little over 90KM to go with 40 seconds to close. De Marchi chased for 15KM but never made it across and had to cut his losses and go back to the bunch. When De Marchi attacked, the peloton threw in the towel and sat up. Decathlon AG2R did the initial pace making and they allowed the gap to balloon out to over 5 minutes 30 seconds with 65KM to go. Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe started to ride hard on the Alto de Mabia with 46KM to go but they second guessed and backed off. The break still had 5 minutes, they were working well together at this point. Van Aert made a clever move at 30KM to go by going forward to grab in the Intermediate Sprint points and he just kept going. Pacher saw the danger and got on the wheel relatively quickly. The two leaders started the 10KM climb of the Alto de Mougás with about 15 seconds as three behind were looking at each other to ride. Van Aert and Pacher went over the Alto de Mougás with 36 seconds on the chasers with a 10KM descent and around 10KM of flat to the finish line. Pacher tried to get away with 1600M to but did not get enough of a gap and was stuck on the front as the pair went under 1KM to go. It was a David and Goliath situation. Pacher started his sprint at 175M but was beaten within 25M and had to settle for second. Behind for third place, Hollmann started his sprint very early and Soler was able to pip him and Lecerf for the last podium spot. The GC group rolled in over 5 minutes later.