Simon Yachts (BikeExchange) won the Alto de Carabanzo to win the first stage of the 64th Vuelta a Asturias, a victory that came together with an attack seven kilometers from the finish line that placed him as leader of the general classification ahead of the other favourite, a Ramiro Sosa (Movistar) that came in eighth, fourteen seconds behind.
The BikeExchange dominated the course of the race and perfectly controlled the script for the climb to Carabanzo, the last of the four ports of this first stage (166.3 kilometres) with an already classic finish in Pola de Lena and the morning circuit by Llanera as the main novelty.
Twenty runners remained at the head of the race after overcoming the heights of La Gargantada (3rd), Colladona (1st), La Cabaña (3rd) and Fresnedo (3rd) and, among them and in the midst of a large presence of the BikeExchange , were the two favorites of the Asturian round, Yates and Sosa.
It was one of Yates’s teammates, Howson, who launched the first attack and the Briton, after a very conservative climb to Carabanzo, took over from the Australian to make the final descent and put fifteen seconds ahead of the rest of the group.
Sosa (Movistar) unsuccessfully tried to follow in the wake of Yates and finally finished eighth in a race finish in which Italian Albanese (Eolo-Kometa) led the chasing group to the finish line, followed by Frenchman Vuillermoz (TotalEnergies) in third position.
The stewards decided to stop the flight at Blimea to compensate for the six minutes that the peloton had to stop at a level crossing, a measure with which the distance between them was once again left in the distance that existed before the launch and that became the anecdote of the day.
Tomorrow, Saturday, the queen stage of the Asturian round will take place, which will take the runners from Candás to Cangas de Narcea (299 kilometres) and which will have as incentives the heights of Aristébano (2nd category) and Forcayu (3rd), in addition to the most demanding of the climbs, El Acebo (1st).