Matthew Brennan reveals Visma's Vuelta plan after stage win: 'Wout was really up for it'

Getting Wout van Aert into the red jersey: that was clearly the goal as Visma | Lease a Bike started the second stage of the Vuelta a España on Sunday. A clever move from Ethan Hayter and, ultimately, a strong Tadej Pogačar appeared to derail those plans, but then Matthew Brennan suddenly emerged to win the stage. And in some style. Afterwards, the British rider explained exactly how it had all played out.

Hayter started the stage on the same time as red jersey wearer Pogačar, and when the Briton made it into the breakaway, he put himself in an excellent position. He stayed out front all the way to the intermediate sprint and, after taking the six bonus seconds available there, Van Aert's hopes of pulling on the red jersey appeared to have been dashed surprisingly early.

Hayter nevertheless dropped back relatively early in the technical finale, suddenly opening the door again. Van Aert attacked with two kilometres remaining and, in truth, only Pogačar was able to follow him. The move then stalled, but Visma | Lease a Bike still had Brennan waiting behind as an extremely dangerous plan B.

That had been the plan from the very beginning. "We started today with the ambition of getting Wout into the red jersey. We knew it was a good opportunity to attack in the finale, and Wout was really up for it. We already had that plan. I was always going to sit in the background and do the sprint if everything came back together," the stage winner explained afterwards in the flash interview.

And what happened? Exactly that. "That's exactly what happened. Everything came back together and Christophe guided me through all the chaos. I'm really happy to finish it off," said Brennan, who was reluctant to say whether he had expected to win during his Grand Tour debut. "Oof. I just hope it's not the last one," the Briton laughed.

"It's a great win," he continued. "The team did a really good job throughout the whole day. We really gave 100 percent. We believed in both options and believed we could achieve something special today. I'm really happy to start like this. If the guys can help me and I get the opportunity to show what I can do, then I couldn't be more grateful."