American Benjamin King on Tuesday sprinted away from breakaway partner Nikita Stanlov to win the fourth stage of the Vuelta a Espana as Michal Kwiatkowski hung onto the overall lead.
Dimension Data’s King and Astana’s Stanlov were part of an early nine-man breakaway that built a gap of almost 10 minutes as Kwiatkowski’s Team Sky set a gentle pace in the peloton.
By the first summit finish of this year’s race, a category-one climb to Alfacar, King and Stanlov were alone. King surged away with a frantic 100m sprint to win the 161.4km stage starting in Velez-Malaga by two seconds.
“It was a dream come true. For me personally, I’m still in shock,” 29-year-old King told Eurosport immediately after his first stage victory in a major tour. “That was an objective at the start of the year.”
French climber Pierre Rolland of Team EF Education First was third, 13 seconds back.
On the final climb, Briton Simon Yates of Mitchelton-Scott and German Emanuel Buchmann of Bora-Handsgrohe broke away from the main pack to cut 25 seconds out of Kwiatkowski’s lead.
The Pole leads Buchmann by seven seconds, Yates by 10 and Spaniard Alejandro Valverde of Movistar Team by 13.
“It was a last very demanding climb,” Kwiatkowski said, adding that he was happy to keep the red jersey “one more day.”
The first climbing stage might have ended the chances of the men who finished on last year’s podium with winner Chris Froome, who is not taking part this year.
Russian Ilnur Zakarin of Katusha-Alpecin finished 8 minutes, 11 seconds behind King, while last year’s runner up Italian Vincenzo Nibali of Bahrain Merida was 11 minutes, 4 seconds back.
“With such high temperatures, we’d expect to see a lot of riders suffer,” Kwiatkowski said.
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