Laporte shows he can climb too, but peloton can’t reel in flying duo in Ruta del Sol

Even though Wednesday’s opening stage featured plenty of climbing early on, it still came down to a sprint. Laporte was surprisingly the fastest there, taking the stage win and the first leader’s jersey.

Thursday brought more climbing, although the gradients were never truly savage. After just over 30 kilometres, the riders faced the Puerto de la Cabra: 25 kilometres long at an average of 4.6%. From the summit it was still around 70 kilometres to the finish, with more rises to come along the way.

Leading up to the long climb, Josh Burnett (Burgos Burpellet BH), Ibai Azanza (Equipo Kern Pharma) and José Antonio Prieto (Petrolike) rode away from the peloton. The trio began the Puerto de la Cabra with a lead of just over two minutes, where the race could well explode early.

That’s exactly what happened. Pre-race favourites Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) and Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates–XRG) showed themselves near the front, which naturally forced the rest of the contenders to react. In the end, Romeo (Movistar) and Leknessund (Uno-X) bridged across to Burnett — the only one from the break who could stay with them.

With Romeo and Leknessund up the road, the situation changed quickly: two proven powerhouses were now driving the move. The Spanish-Norwegian alliance soon held around two minutes over the bunch, forcing the GC teams to organise behind to keep the overall standings from slipping away.

On the twisting roads of the southern Spanish plateau, it proved incredibly hard to take time back from the leaders. UAE and Q36.5 tried to use the uphill sections to chip away, and the pace claimed some of the faster men — including Orluis Aular (Movistar). Laporte, though, managed to stay in the mix for a long time.

Despite all the work, Romeo and Leknessund still had about two minutes in hand heading into the final climb of the day: the Alto de la Malahá, just 2.4 kilometres at 4.6% on average. The duo barely cracked there either, cresting with roughly a minute and a half still to play with.

By then it looked increasingly likely the move would stick — meaning Leknessund and Romeo could settle the stage win between themselves. With two kilometres to go, Romeo sensed his companion was running out of gas and struck with a late acceleration to take the victory. The rest of the favourites arrived just under a minute later.