La Vuelta 2018: Simon Clarke wins Stage 5 as Rudy Molard takes red jersey
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Updated 29/08/2018 at 15:56 GMT
Australia’s Simon Clarke won a thrilling three-way sprint to win Stage 5 of La Vuelta as fellow escapee Rudy Molard of France caused an upset by taking over the race lead from Poland’s Michal Kwiatkowski.
Simon Clarke bei der Vuelta 2018
Image credit: Getty Images
Six years after his maiden stage win in the Vuelta, veteran Clarke took a belated second success by winning an Andalusian game of cat, mouse and cheese with Dutchman Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) and Italy’s Alessandro De Marchi (BMC) – securing in the process a first WorldTour win this season for his EF Education First-Drapac team.
Frenchman Molard (Groupama-FDJ) took sixth place in the stage at the back of a chasing trio which came home eight seconds down – but almost five minutes ahead of the peloton.
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Clarke sprints to Stage 5 win after three-man break
Trailing overnight leader Kwiatkowski (Team Sky) by 3’46” going into the sweltering 188.7km stage, 28-year-old Molard took the red jersey from the Pole’s shoulders on yet another unpredictable day of racing over rolling terrain in southern Spain.
Molard, a winner of a Paris-Nice stage earlier in the season, now leads Kwiatkowski by 1’01” in the general classification after Team Sky appeared to make the tactical decision of giving up the race lead.
Clarke’s winning move came after the Australian joined forces with Mollema to reel in lone leader De Marchi on a descent ahead of the decisive final climb, more than 50km from the finish.
All three experienced riders were part of a large 25-man group that took a long time to form over rolling terrain. But with four Vuelta stage wins between them – two for De Marchi and one apiece for Clarke and Mollema – the experience of the leaders shone through.
“It’s just amazing. I’ve worked so hard since I last a stage here and I just couldn’t repeat it,” an emotional Clarke, 32, said – six years after he won Stage 4 of the 2012 edition of the race.
It’s taken me so long to get back there and have my stars aligned. Today I wasn’t sure it was possible. I knew I had good legs but when you have a breakaway with so many riders the cooperation is never very good. And as you saw the winning move went on the descent. So, it was a tricky one to pick, but I knew I had good legs and I just had to pray that the moves I was making were the right ones.
With a chasing trio of Molard, Davide Villella (Astana) and Floris de Tier (LottoNL-Jumbo) closing in on the home straight, Clarke kept his cool and channelled his experience on the boards in a tussle for which he was always going to be the favourite.
“I grew up on the track since I was 15 and it was just like track racing. I know that De Marchi is fast but it was such a long stage and it’s so hard to sprint after that. Even I was cramping. Mollema attacked and I just rode through it and backed myself," he said.
“I was so worried that they would catch us from behind. But in that situation you have to be as cold as ice and you have to be willing to lose the win. I was and I came out on top.”
High temperatures forced the organisers to bring forward the start earlier than scheduled but the heat did not deter the riders as the race covered a staggering 47.8km over lumpy terrain in the first hour as the route skirted the mountainous Sierra Nevada national park.
Numerous attempts to form a break – including digs from the world champion Peter Sagan and the out-of-form Vincenzo Nibali – came to nothing.
In fact, it was not until over 60km of racing that we saw a large break of 25 riders open up a gap over the peloton, which was being controlled by the Sky team of Kwiatkowski – one of two teams, alongside Quick-Step Floors, who were not represented up the road in the move.
There was an attempt at a shake out on the Cat.3 Alto de Orgiva as Frenchman Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) rode clear alongside the Italian De Marchi, with another Italian, Valerio Conti (UAE Team Emirates) in pursuit.
And with 65km remaining, De Marchi rolled the dice as he soloed clear on one of the many uncategorised climbs in a day that threw more than three-thousand vertical metres at the peloton – despite a forgiving downhill finish.
Twice a stage winner on the Vuelta, De Marchi was caught by Clarke and Mollema on the descent as, behind, a nine-man chase group formed from the large break.
On the decisive Cat.2 Alto el Marchal it was last year’s polka dot jersey Villella who led the chase – soon to be joined by the feisty duo of Molard and De Tier. Mollema punctured near the summit but kept his cool to rejoin De Marchi and Clarke before the top, which they crested with 40-odd seconds over the chasing duo.
Frenchman Molard had more motivation to push on than a maiden Grand Tour stage win: with the peloton still six minutes down, Groupama-FDJ's dreams of their first Grand Tour leader's jersey in 13 years were well and truly alive – despite Molard apparently suffering cramps on the fast descent back towards the Mediterranean coast.
Approaching the outskirts of Roquetas de Mar, the leading trio started to play mind games. First De Marchi and Clarke both went for long-distance raids before the pace almost came to a standstill as the leaders pre-empted a tactical final sprint.
Having seen their deficit grow to above a minute on the descent, the chasing trio of Villella, Molard and De Tier were suddenly back in the frame – that is, until Clarke finally kicked clear with the finish line beckoning.
One day after Frenchman Pierre Rolland finished third from a leading trio, EF Education First-Drapac got the win they so badly sought – Clarke ending the drought for Jonathan Vaughters' outfit, who followed Ben King's Dimension Data’s lead from Stage 4 with a belated opening WorldTour win of the season.
Both teams may well trail Quick-Step Floors' lead of 30 WorldTour wins by quite a considerable margin – but a win's a win, and who knows what breaking such a duck can do to team morale.
The remnants of the break arrived in dribs and drabs before Team Sky led the peloton over the line 4’55” down to confirm an unexpected red jersey for Molard.
Kwiatkowski, however, will be able to console himself on Thursday with the green jersey which the Spanish veteran Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) was sporting while the Pole led the race.
Coming up: Stage 6 – Huercal-Overa to San Javier. Mar Menor (155.7km)
Undulating coastal roads take the riders north-east over two Cat.3 climbs ahead of a flat finish that should produce the second bunch sprint of the race and a rare chance for the likes of Elia Viviani, Giacomo Nizzolo, Nacer Bouhanni and Peter Sagan to take the spoils.
In short: WorldTour win number 31 beckons for Viviani's Quick-Step.
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