Kaden Groves powers to sprint victory on Stage 2 of La Vuelta
Kaden Groves outsprinted Wout van Aert, who took over the leader's Red Jersey after a crash marred run into Ourem on Stage 2 of the Vuelta a Espana.
A crash over a low concrete barrier with just 1.5km remaining saw Jhonatan Narvaez and Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers) suffer falls. Battered and bruised, both were able to remount and finish the stage.
Van Aert took the red jersey, holding off Corbin Strong to consign the Israel-Premier Tech rider to third place, claiming six valuable bonus seconds.
The long slow stage came to life in the closing kilometers after the final 4th category climb, with the sprinters teams committing to controlling the pace, which was marred by a big crash which took two out two of Groves' chief lead-out men.
The Australian was forced to surf wheels in the final sprint and came off the Belgian's back wheel, around van Aert to take his first win of the season.
Having had a barren season, Groves was relieved to take an early victory in a Vuelta that offers very few opportunities for the sprinters, "It's been a hard year for myself, not having a win yet," he said afterwards. "I came here super motivated to change that... It wasn't the plan to follow Van Aert but my two lead-out men had mechanicals so I missed them both. Normally Wout would have followed me but in the end I had to go the opposite."
Van Aert's second place meant he took the red jersey after coming third in the opening time trial on Saturday.
Stage 3 on Monday is the last day on Portuguese soil, and sees the peloton traveling from Lousa to Castelo Branco. Again, there are significant elevation gains, but these should not pose insurmountable problems for the better sprinters after 191 km of racing.
VIDEO: 2024 La Vuelta Stage 2 Highlights
2024 La Vuelta Stage 2 Top 10
1 GROVES Kaden Alpecin - Deceuninck 5:12:55
2 VAN AERT Wout Team Visma | Lease a Bike 0:00
3 STRONG Corbin Israel - Premier Tech 0:00
4 MIQUEL Pau Equipo Kern Pharma 0:00
5 VAN EETVELT Lennert Lotto Dstny 0:00
6 BITTNER Pavel Team dsm-firmenich PostNL 0:00
7 ABERASTURI Jon Euskaltel - Euskadi 0:00
8 VLASOV Aleksandr Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe 0:00
9 RIVERA Brandon Smith INEOS Grenadiers 0:00
10 BARONCINI Filippo UAE Team Emirates 0:00
2 VAN AERT Wout Team Visma | Lease a Bike 0:00
3 STRONG Corbin Israel - Premier Tech 0:00
4 MIQUEL Pau Equipo Kern Pharma 0:00
5 VAN EETVELT Lennert Lotto Dstny 0:00
6 BITTNER Pavel Team dsm-firmenich PostNL 0:00
7 ABERASTURI Jon Euskaltel - Euskadi 0:00
8 VLASOV Aleksandr Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe 0:00
9 RIVERA Brandon Smith INEOS Grenadiers 0:00
10 BARONCINI Filippo UAE Team Emirates 0:00