Vuelta a Espana 2021 - Florian Senechal sprints to Stage 13 win as Deceuninck–QuickStep teammate Jakobsen falls short

ByFelix Lowe

Updated 27/08/2021 at 17:02 GMT

Frenchman Florian Senechal beat Italy’s Matteo Trentin in a surprise two-up sprint in Stage 13 after a scrappy finale saw favourite Fabio Jakobsen distanced by his own train. With the green jersey out, Deceuninck-QuickStep’s Senechal pocketed his first Grand Tour stage win on a day splits in the pack saw Egan Bernal claw back five seconds in the battle for red.

Florian Senechal was not the Deceuninck-Quickstep or even the Frenchman we expected to cross the line with his arms aloft at the end of the seemingly interminable Stage 13 of La Vuelta. The race’s penultimate flat finish was anything but a regular bunch sprint after Deceuninck’s dominance strung out the peloton and killed off all the competition in Villanueva de la Serena.

The Deceuninck train was so strong that even the team’s man in green, Fabio Jakobsen, struggled to keep up – as well as their principal rival on paper, the misfiring French sprinter Arnaud Demare of Groupama-FDJ. Jakobsen, the double stage winner from the Netherlands, almost closed the gap inside the final two kilometres but then pulled up after failing to make the connection.

• Stage 13 as it happened - Senechal the surprise winner on long, hot day

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Italy’s Matteo Trentin, the versatile UAE Team Emirates rider, looked to be the big favourite to pick up his first Vuelta stage win since bagging four in 2017. And when Germany’s Alexander Krieger opened up the sprint in the belief he was leading out Alpecin-Fenix teammate Sacha Modolo, it was Trentin and Senechal who reacted first on the home straight.

But it was the man with just two professional wins to his name who powered ahead, Senechal taking the win by a wheel after Trentin failed to close the gap. Italy’s Alberto Dainese (Team DSM) crossed the line two seconds down in third place before Slovenia’s Luka Mezgec (Team BikeExchange) and Belgium’s Stan Dewulf (AG2R-Citroen) completed the top five.

'I gave the maximum' - Florian Senechal speaks after Stage 13 win

A highly unconventional finish saw Colombia’s Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) come home in tenth, with the red jersey of Christian Odd Eiking (Intermarche-Wanty-Gobert) and the defending champion Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) caught out in a small split as the main pack of favourites crossed the line a further five seconds back.

Ahead of a weekend in the mountains, Bernal stays in seventh place, 4:41 down on Eiking. The Norwegian leads Frenchman Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) by 58 seconds and Slovenia’s Roglic by 1:56, with Movistar duo Enric Mas and Miguel Angel Lopez completing the top five on GC.

Jakobsen’s disappointment of missing out on a third stage win was allayed not only by his teammate Senechal’s breakthrough win, but by the fact that the Dutchman managed to extend his lead in the green jersey standings to 86 points over the Dane Magnus Cort (EF Education-Nippo) after winning the intermediate sprint just 13km from the finish.

Luis Ángel Maté Mardones of Spain and Team Euskaltel - Euskadi, Diego Rubio Hernandez of Spain and Team Burgos - BH and Alvaro Cuadros Morata of Spain and Team Caja Rural-Seguros RGA compete in the breakaway during the 76th Tour of Spain 2021, Stage 13

Image credit: Getty Images

An all-Spanish trio of Luis Angel Mate (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Diego Rubio (Burgos-BH) and Alvaro Cuadros (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) drew the short straw at the breakfast table and attacked from the outset of the 204km stage through the barren Extremadura region of south-west Spain, never moving more than three minutes ahead of the peloton which trundled along at an average speed well under 40kmh.

Brief gusts of winds on some exposed roads 58km from the finish momentarily split the peloton into two and caused a potential flashpoint. But the race soon came back together ahead of what looked like a green jersey bonanza for that man Jakobsen, who rode clear to win the intermediate sprint uncontested at Don Benito just moments before the finish.

Twenty points was all the Dutchman would add to his green jersey tally, however, after his Deceuninck-QuickStep team strung out the peloton exiting a tight roundabout 3km from the finish. Four of the so-called Wolfpack opened up a gap which Jakobsen, with Trentin on his wheel, struggled to close.

The 24-year-old then threw in the towel ahead of the flamme rouge. His teammate Senechal later claimed, perhaps generously, that Jakobsen had a flat tyre - but the main in green did not mince his words: "I tried to close the gap but I couldn't. I didn't have the legs to sprint, so I told Florian he should do the sprint."

The Frenchman duly delivered with the third and biggest win of his career, with Jakobsen freewheeling home in 100th place. Success for Deceuninck-QuickStep – but not the result many expected.

Saturday’s Stage 14 sees the Vuelta return to the mountains, with the double ascent of the Pico Villuercas a severe test for the red jersey credentials of Eiking, with defending champion Roglic ready to pounce and return to the race summit.

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