Woods wins demanding Vuelta stage 13 as Roglic takes big bite from overall lead

MADRID: Michael Woods (Israel Premier Tech) won the 13th stage of the Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain) cycle race on Friday on a day when Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) took a big step towards the overall lead as Ben O'Connor struggled.

With O'Connor's Decathlon AG2R-La Mondiale team more interested in controlling the race and keeping something in their legs for the final climb up the first category Puerto de Ancares, a group of 23 riders, which again included Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a bike) and Woods were allowed to go up the road.

With the favorites focused on their own race knowing nobody in the break was a threat in the overall classification, it was allowed to go over 17 minutes up the road, before the unrelenting terrain slowly but surely left just seven riders.

Things looked odd for UAE Team Emirates, who had three riders in the lead group, but with Marc Soler working hard to tire Van Aert and Woods, his team-mates Jay Vine and Brandon McNulty both hit the ground on a tight corner, taking them out of contention.

Woods, the specialist climber in the breakaway escaped on the steep Ancares climb, which has ramps of 15 percent gradient, and ground his way up the climb to the stage win, with Mauro Schmid (Jayco-AlUla) 45 seconds behind.

In the main group, Movistar were working to set the pace for Enric Mas to launch an attack on the final climb, but it was Roglic's Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe who upped the pace on the steepest part of the climb, shredding the main group and leaving O'Connor behind, while Adam Yates (UAE) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easy Post) were also struggling.

Sepp Kuss (Visma) also dropped behind Roglic and Mas rode clear, with Roglic then riding clear of Mas.

Roglic finished a minute and 54 seconds ahead of O'Connor, who gave everything in the final kilometers, to maintain an overall advantage of a minute and 21 seconds on Roglic and three minutes and 1 second ahead of Mas, but with two more tough mountain stages over the week, it will be surprise if O'Connor goes into the final week as leader.