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Van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), who took victory on Stage 3, powered home in four hours and 15 minutes to take the seventh stage ahead of Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) in second and Pau Miquel Delgado (Kern Pharma) in third.
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La Vuelta 2024
series • cycling
series • cycling
“We always had this stage in mind for Wout but we knew it would be hard, especially with the pace on the last climb,” said Sepp Kuss, who played an integral role in van Aert’s victory.
“The pace was hard but when I saw Wout there I knew he was on a good day. It was a ‘suffer fest’ to pull Soler back but it feels like a victory for me too.”
Kuss did a lot of the work to pull Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) back on the day’s only categorised climb, with van Aert waiting in the wings as a flat run brought the 180.5-kilometre route to a close.
The work of Soler, Kuss, and before them Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), had whittled the peloton down to 33 riders following the climb, and though Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates) launched his sprint early, van Aert had the legs to reel him in for the win.
“I expected it to be a way bigger group to go to the finish,” van Aert explained.
“I knew the climb on the circuit was hard but I didn’t expect that the race would explode like it did.
“Sepp did such an amazing job, I don’t think people know what it’s like when you’re below 60 kilograms and you do those kinds of pulls on the flat.”
Van Aert’s victory further increased his lead in the points classification, with Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) now 41 points back in second place with two-thirds of the Spanish Grand Tour still to come.
As for the general classification, O’Connor (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale) remains 4’45” ahead of Roglic after the latter took six seconds back at the top of the climb.
