2015 Vuelta a España Stage 14: BMC’s De Marchi claims victory, Astana’s Aru hangs on to the red

After Saturday’s stage 14 of the Vuelta a España, BMC’s Alessandro De Marchi claimed a powerful solo victory on the summit finish. Astana’s Fabio Aru, meanwhile, after a pitched battle through the stage, held on to the red jersey.

De Marchi’s teammate, Samuel Sanchez, has withdrawn from the Vuelta due to a nagging foot injury.

The summit finish was the first of three consecutive grueling, hard climbs through the mountains of northern Spain. On its final ascent towards the cloud-shrouded summit, De Marchi dropped fellow countryman Salvatore Puccio, riding for Team Sky, barely a kilometre from the line. The 29-year-old cyclist’s victory put him across the finish with a 21 second gap on Puccio, decisively securing the win after a long, marathon ride from Vitoria — 215 km in all, mostly through the high terrain of the Cantabrian mountains.

Coming in third on the summit finish was Jose Joaquin Rojas of Team Movistar, followed by Mikael Cherel of Ag2R-La Mondiale in fourth and Colombia’s Carlos Quintero, of the Colombian national team, in fifth. With Movistar’s Nairo Quintana in sixth and Joaquim Rodriquez of Katusha in seventh, Giant-Alpecin’s Tom Dumoulin, who took powerful wins earlier in the competition, came back from a flagging ride in the last stretches of the stage to claim eighth place, 49 seconds behind Fabio Aru. For the Dutch rider, it was enough to hang on to his third-ranked standing in GC.

DeMarchi was as surprised as anyone by his performance, after a 2015 season — his first riding for BMC — beset by injury.

“With a bit of luck, I was able to do a fast attack,” De Marchi said after reaching the finish. “I was lucky because I do not think I was the strongest. Today was very difficult, first to get in the breakaway and then to take the win. But everything felt great.” What worked well for the Italian rider, he said, was concentrating his efforts where they would count the most, even if that meant dialing down the power at times.

It was a strategy that came in especially handy when Mikael Cherel went on the attack in the last four kilometres, aggressively pouring it on when the road reached a plateau after a long ascent. Reeled in by DeMarchi, Cherel went for it again. “It was really difficult to get into the break,” DeMarchi told Eurosport, “and then the final climb was very tough. Cherel went a couple of times and I had to wait until I could use my strengths and strike the right blow.”

“In the end all the waiting paid off.”

On Sunday, the Vuelta a España ascends into Picos de Europa National Park for stage 15, when a 176 km race climaxes with a summit finish on the Alto del Sotres in Spain’s Asturias mountains.

2015 Vuelta a España Stage 14

1) Alessandro De Marchi (Italy/BMC) 5:43:12
2) Salvatore Puccio (Italy/Team Sky) 0:00:21
3) JJ Rojas (Spain/Movistar) 0:00:32
83) Antoine Duchesne (Canada/Europcar) +17:19
139) Dominique Rollin (Canada/Cofidis) +20:35

2015 Vuelta a España GC

1) Fabio Aru (Italy/Astana) 57:20:10
2) Joaquim Rodriguez (Spain/Katusha) +0:26
3) Tom Dumoulin (Netherlands/Giant-Alpecin) +0:49
145) Dominique Rollin (Canada/Cofidis) +2:23:23
150) Antoine Duchesne (Canada/Europcar) +2:27:42