AG2R La Mondiale’s Tony Gallopin climbed to victory on the 185.7km seventh stage of the Vuelta a Espana in Pozo Alcón today.
The Frenchman completed the race in 4:18:20, beating Bora-Hansgrohe’s Peter Sagan and Movistar’s Alejandro Valverde by five seconds.
Groupama-FDJ’s Rudy Molard retained his race lead, 47 seconds clear from Movistar’s Valverde in second.
AG2R La Mondiale’s Tony Gallopin climbed to victory on the 185.7km seventh stage of the Vuelta a Espana today. Photo: Unipublic/Luis Ángel Gómez
Moves were made early in the race when Alexis Gougeard, Michael Woods, Floris De Tier, Nicola Conci, Edward Ravasi, Alex Aranburu and Oscar Rodriguez composed a breakaway just several kilometres in.
They gradually increased their lead over the peloton to almost three minutes about 40km in, before it increased to three-minutes-17-seconds 10km later.
Just past the halfway mark, Movistar added an injenction of pace at the head of the peloton as the gap dropped to two-minutes-33-seconds.
The breakaways kept holding their own following the Alto Collado de Laude climb as FDJ were setting a high pace in the peloton with 64km to go.
With 39km remaining the gap dwindled slightly to one minute and 30 seconds due to the peloton’s increased pace.
The break was eventually caught with less than 18km remaining, but Woods and De Tier went ahead, before the Canadian went solo and created a 38-second lead over the peloton.
His lead was short-lived as he got caught with 12km left. The peloton was all together with 10km to go, which included red jersey wearer Molard.
With just over 3km remaining the race began blowing to pieces as Jesús Herrada led the way and went ahead.
Gallopin then began closing in on Herrada with two kilometres to go, before the Frenchman outlasted the rest to take the spoils at the end.
“We knew the final was a hectic part, so we had planned to first make it in the breakaway. Then at the end the team put me in a really good position and I fought with the best I had,” Gallopin said afterwards.
“Then when we came on the last straight road I had a plan to try and attack. I looked back just before the last corner, maybe 200m to go, and I saw nobody behind me. I turned again and I went full on the last straight [section].
“It’s fantastic and I’m so happy.”
