La Vuelta Ciclista a España 2024 Stage 13

August 30, 2024 The riders make their way out of Galicia and into Castilla y León for the difficult mountain top finish at the Puerto de Ancares. The climb is 12 kilometers long at an average of over 9% but the final 5KM never goes easier than 12%. If anyone has weaknesses, they will get exposed on this climb. A group of 23 riders got away at the start and Decathlon AG2R had no interest in controlling day, letting the break go out past 15 minutes. The break worked well together until 48KM to go when Victor Campenaerts of Lotto-Dstny kicked things off. He took Wout Van Aert of Visma-Lease a Bike, Mauro Schmid of Jayco AlUla and Simon Guglielmi of Arkéa-B&B Hotels. The pace was too much for Guglielmi and he had to drop back to the rest of the break. An uncategorized climb at 39KM split the break under the pressure from UAE. The trio was brought back and new group of 9 formed including Schmid, Van Aert, Marc Soler, Brandon McNulty and Jay Vine of UAE, Kasper Asgreen of Soudal Quickstep, Gijs Leemreize of DSM-Firmenich, Michael Woods of Israel-Premier Tech, and Sam Oomen of Lidl-Trek. Soler and Vine each attacked the group on the Puerto de Lumeras but they only managed to shake Asgreen and Leemreize. A crash early on the descent took down McNulty who went under the barriers and was miraculously safely caught by bushes in the other side. Vine also went down which left just 5 riders in the front. On the final climb, Schmid put the first attack in as the road got really steep at 5KM to go. Woods followed, then dropped Schmid 500M later in a solo bid for victory. No one was able to make it back to Woods as he crossed the line for his fourth Grand Tour Stage win. Schmid came in next with Soler taking third. Unlike yesterday, a GC fight was gearing up as Movistar took control to make the race harder. Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe took over when the road got steep and the front of the GC group was quickly down to Primož Roglič of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Sepp Kuss of Visma-Lease a Bike, and Enric Mas of Movistar. Kuss was first to drop away then Mas, leaving Roglič to go alone with over 2KM of climbing to go. Roglič put his stamp on the race, putting 1 minute into Mas and nearly 2 minutes into leader Ben O'Connor whose lead has now been trimmed to just 1 minute 21 seconds.