The 2024 Vuelta a España has come to a close with a 24.6-kilometre individual time trial, and for the fourth time in recent history, Primož Roglič has been crowned Vuelta champion, the Slovenian’s fifth Grand Tour title since 2019.
Stefan Küng was the hugely popular winner of the fast and fairly technical ITT, a discipline he’s made his own but which has not always been kind to the multiple Swiss national champion. Remarkably, it’s the Groupama-FDJ rider’s first ever Grand Tour stage win, and the 29th victory of his career, bringing to a close a summer of bad luck and illness – a happy ending for a popular rider.
How it happened
- Edoardo Affini (Visma-Lease a Bike) set an early benchmark, turning heads as he did, chiefly by opting for double disc wheels – a decision that appeared to toe the line between bold and foolhardy, especially in the early, more blustery third of the course. He completed the TT at an average of 53.5 kph to push Thibault Guernalec (Arkéa B&B Hotels) out of the hot seat with a 9-second advantage, but faster rides were still to come.
- Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Dstny) was the next man on a mission, and he chipped away at the time checks to better Affini by 12 seconds at the finish.
- The contenders then came thick and fast: Mauro Schmid (Jayco AlUla), Filippo Baroncini (UAE Team Emirates) and stage 1 runner-up Mattias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) all set fast times, but then Stefan Küng came blasting through Vacek’s benchmark at the first time check a whole 18 seconds faster.
- Küng finished the 24.6-kilometre time trial completely empty and smashed Baroncini’s time by 43 seconds, meaning he finished his effort at an average speed of almost 56 kph. Once all the riders had finished their efforts, the stellar level of Küng’s performance was made clear: fastest by 13 seconds at the first time check 8 km into the course; 28 seconds to the good at the 17.5-kilometre mark; and 30 seconds at the finish – after Küng, 2nd and 8th all finished within half a minute of each other.
- Mattia Cattaneo (T-Rex-QuickStep) started after Küng so operated away from the spotlight for the most part – he incurred a fine and received a yellow card for cutting a corner that drew some attention – but the Italian was quietly putting in one of the rides of the race to finish third. It’s an especially notable result given the sacrifices he made to look after team leader Mikel Landa who began to struggle in the closing road stages.
- The first leader’s jerseys were sealed by the Australian duo Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates) who completed their time trials and the Vuelta by mid-afternoon, successfully booking trips to the podium for the points and mountains classifications.
- Vine’s teammate Brandon McNulty was a rider to watch, the US national champion hoping to bookend his Vuelta with time trial victories, however, that dream was over by the second time check where he was well over a minute slower than the provisional best time. The 26-year-old finished the day 131st – in the end, almost four minutes slower Küng – with a bloodied knee, bitterly disappointed.
- Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos Grenadiers) got the GC contenders underway, where only a disaster or career-best performance seemed likely to change the names on the podium. Third-place Enric Mas was 49 seconds ahead of fourth Richard Carapaz at the start of the day, the Ecuador national champion himself 1:48 ahead of David Gaudu, a Frenchman not famed for time trial prowess.
- The most intriguing duel was expected to be over second place, Mas needing just nine seconds if he was to topple O’Connor and take his fourth career runner-up finish at the Vuelta. However, O’Connor executed a brilliant time trial, only giving away 14 seconds to stage winner Küng at the first time check, and eventually finishing just outside the stage top 10. Mas also raced well, but he lost 28 seconds to O’Connor over 24.6 km, and finished on the same time as Carapaz to confirm a fourth podium finish at his home Grand Tour.
- Further down the standings, best-young-rider Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) put in a fantastic ride to claim a stage top 10 and bump Gaudu from the top five overall, marking a spectacular end to his first attempt at targeting the GC at a Grand Tour. Ultimately, this was also the only movement in the top 10.
- Roglič was really the only rider who could threaten Küng’s supremacy over the stage in the end, and he stayed close throughout the course, but by the finish he was 31 seconds in arrears of the Swiss champion. However, he extended his overall winning margin to 2:36 over O’Connor who achieved his goal of finishing on a Grand Tour podium for the first time in his career.
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Quotes of the day
Stefan Küng was cool, calm and collected in the hot seat having left nothing to chance in a time trial that couldn’t have been better suited to the big Swiss specialist. He gave the impression of a man who would be content whatever the result, but finally it was a win, a first Grand Tour stage win of his career – at long last.
It’s amazing, finally. I’ve been fighting for it for a very long time and I really wanted that win today, and I knew, with the parcours, you had to go out hard and just keep it together until the end, and that’s what I did – I suffered a lot today, [like] everyone at the end of this hard Vuelta, and I’m just so happy that I got this win here, my first Grand Tour stage win. It’s been a long time in the making.”
Roglič was second on the day, but confirmed his overall title over O’Connor to match the record number of Vuelta titles, tying with Spain’s Roberto Heras. When asked how it felt to match the record, his answer was characteristically economical.
Yeah, nice!”
Having come fourth at both the Giro d’Italia (2024) and Tour de France (2021), O’Connor came to the Vuelta with his eyes on the final podium – “anywhere but fourth” – and though 13 days in the red jersey after stage 6 victory may have encouraged the dream of the top step, O’Connor was realistic in the end. Mission accomplished for both the Perth man and Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale.
It’s a bit of a dream, I have been close before but to get it now is such an amazing thing … I was really surprised I could get to stage 19 still wearing the red jersey, and it’s pretty nice to have the feeling that one day that you could maybe win a GT. That’s something I’d probably have found unrealistic before, especially after the Giro [where he finished 28 seconds off the podium]. So to be so close here is pretty special.”
Brief analysis
- It seems impossible that Küng had never won a Grand Tour stage until today, a stage he’s had his sights on since illness hampered all his big targets of the summer: the Tours de Suisse and France, and the Olympic Games. The Swiss time trial specialist has come agonisingly close twice at the Tour de France: second behind Geraint Thomas in Düsseldorf in 2017; then second behind Pogačar on stage 5 of the 2021 edition, and he has a hoard of top 10s on road and TT stages. It’s a big result for his team too. In fact, Küng is the first Groupama-FDJ rider not named Arnaud Démare to win a Grand Tour stage since 2020. The signs are good for the coming weeks in which the 30-year-old will attempt to take a third European ITT title before a home World Championships at the end of September.
- It might not have been the Grand Tour clean sweep UAE Team Emirates was hoping for, but it was a successful Vuelta for the mega-team nonetheless, taking home two stage wins, the mountains classification for Jay Vine – who was almost paralysed in the horror crash that so affected the 2024 season – and the team prize for which all remaining riders were able to celebrate on the final podium in Madrid.
- There was a clean sweep of a different kind as Slovenian riders won every Grand Tour of 2024, two for Tadej Pogačar and now the Vuelta for Roglič. Cycling has been firmly in the era of Slovenian excellence for five years now, but 2024 marks a peak for the small Central European nation. 15 men’s Grand Tour stages were won by a Slovenian, that’s a 24% share, and for just two men.
- The 2024 Vuelta was a good one for the home nation. Besides Mas’s third overall, Spanish riders won four stages in total, which is the best result since 2019, and a significant improvement on 2023 when Jesús Herrada was the only home rider to cross the line first. That three of those four stages were won by a home ProTeam really sets this year’s Vuelta apart.
- Kern Pharma’s three stage wins puts them equal with Jayco AlUla, Lidl-Trek, Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and Intermarché-Wanty as far as Grand Tour success goes, and there are only four (WorldTour) teams that did any better – and they all had 42 more chances. This is particularly remarkable for a team with a reported budget that matches what Remco Evenepoel alone takes home in a year.
- The march of time continues with the close of the Vuelta as the latest raft of retirees bids farewell to Grand Tour racing, most notably Robert Gesink (38) and Thomas De Gendt (37) – though, not forgetting Rigoberto Urán (37) who sadly had to abandon the Vuelta after crashing on stage 6 – both former GC contenders, and both stage winners. The bearded Belgian will be missed by all who love a breakaway, and Gesink’s absence will be dearly felt by Visma-Lease a Bike, the team which became his home for almost two whole decades.
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