Vuelta a España stage 14 Live – More climbing on the longest day

The road is steadily dragging uphill towards our first climb, the category-3 Puerto de Cerredo (7km at 4.6%). 

Visma-Lease a Bike have now come to the front of the bunch to control things, and it looks like they’re pegging the gap at a modest 2:30 as things stand.

Bahrain Victorious, who had been keen but missed out on this move, flirted with the idea of bringing it back but the gap is now up at 90 seconds after 62km, and this looks very much like our day’s breakaway.

And here’s the full six-man break as it now stands with added Campenaerts and Tejada 

Here’s the original trio plus latecomer Del Toro in second wheel.

The gap goes out past 30 seconds and it looks like this could be our break of the day.

Official average speed for the first hour: 48.7km/h.

Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Dstny) and Harold Tejada (Astana-Qazaqstan) make it up to the break now to make it six. The small group from which they jumped has been swallowed up and the peloton is still close at hand…

We’ve done an hour now, and almost 50km on the clock. A flying start and it’s still not settled but it does look now like a breakaway could be properly forming.

They’re joined now by Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates), who may still have COVID-19, with more springing from behind.

A three-man move goes clear: Jhonatan Narváez (Ineos Grenadiers), Xandro Meurisse (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Marco Frigo (Israel-Premier Tech).

18 in the latest move but it’s going nowhere (on a train).

Yep it’s back to square one, as 12 more go after him and the whole thing comes back together. 

Thibault Guernalec (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) is the latest to come through the queue for the queue, the lobby, the real queue, and into the bagging area… but will it crash on him?

A ticket to this breakaway as hard to find as Oasis right now. 

It’s still raining attacks and it’s still all together.

All together again as we rattle along at over 50km/h. A start like this will make the Vuelta’s longest day feel a little less long.

Riley Sheehan (Israel-Premier Tech) kicks off the next wave of attacks.

Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Dstny) goes solo for a little while but it’s all back together. 

We’re off

The flag is waved and stage 14 is underway. Here come the first attacks.

One non-starter today and that’s Cofidis’ Ruben Fernandez. Easy to forget the Spaniard won the Tour de l’Avenir back in the day – he hasn’t quite had the career that most l’Avenir winners go on to enjoy. 

Before we get going, now’s the time to catch up on yesterday’s action, and there was plenty of it. Stage 13 report and results here.

Here’s a closer look at the profile. There’s a long drag and a stiff hike to the cat-3 climb at the half-way point, ahead of the cat-1 test later on. It looks fairly imposing there and while it’s 22.8km long, it has an average gradient of 4.5%, and a steady one at that, making it hard for the GC men to force any meaningful separation. 

The riders have just rolled out from Villafranca del Bierzo and are making their way through the neutral zone. Not long before the race will be underway.

Hello there and welcome along to our live coverage of stage 14 of the Vuelta a España. 

It’s the longest day of the race, at a shade over 200km, and we have yet more climbing on the menu, with a late cat-1 climb followed by a descent to the line. However, unlike yesterday’s savage final ascent, today’s climbing is more modest in gradient, and big GC fireworks are more likely to be reserved for tomorrow’s monster summit finish. The breakaway men will be particularly interested today.