La Vuelta Ciclista a España 2024 Stage 12

August 29, 2024 The profile is up and down the entire day with a summit finish on top of the wide highway climb of Cabeza de Manzaneda. The first 40KM were ridden flat out. A group of 10 riders got away with 30 seconds but the bunch did not slow down. They were within 6 seconds on one of the many uncategorized climbs then, all of a sudden, the peloton seemed to just shut down and the gap went out, formalizing the break of the day at 94KM to go. The riders that made it were Louis Meintjes of Intermarché-Wanty, Mauro Schmid of Jayco AlUla, Jhonatan Narváez and Óscar Rodríguez of Ineos, Mauri Vansevenant of T-Rex Quickstep, Carlos Verona of Lidl-Trek, Marc Soler of UAE, Max Poole of DSM-Firmenich, Pablo Castrillo of Equipo-Kern Pharma, and Harold Tejada of Astana. Michael Woods and Laurens Huys of Arkéa-B&B Hotels were stuck 1 minute behind the leaders and over 4 minutes ahead of the bunch. Woods and Huys could not get any closer and quickly made the call to sit up and try on another day. The gap blew out to the front group to almost 8 minutes at 70KM to go. The complexion of the race changed with 25KM to go as the peloton were gearing up for the final 15KM climb of the Cabeza de Manzaneda. Soler was the first to attack from the break, then Verona countered. He got up to 17 seconds but was dragged back with 10KM to the top. The climb flattened out there and Castrillo attacked, no one immediately chased. Poole, Soler, Schmid and Narváez formed a group further up the climb but they were dysfunctional at best and couldn't get Castrillo within 30 seconds. In the end, Castrillo had enough of an advantage to take an historic win for Equipo-Kern Pharma on the day that former President of the team, Manolo Azcona, passed away. Poole finished second, 8 seconds down with Soler taking third. In the GC group, the climb was not hard enough for any team to take up the pace so the GC remains status-quo.