Deceuninck – Quick-Step finished runner-up on Saturday after an eventful stage.
On the day Rome was sacked by the Visigoths 1609 years ago, Alicante – the region which until then had been part of the Hispania Tarraconensis, one of the Roman Empire’s most important provinces – hosted the start of the Vuelta a España. For the 14th time this century, the season’s final Grand Tour kicked off with a team time trial, whose opening section was set against the spectacular backdrop of the Torrevieja Salt Marshes, dating back to the 13th century.
The penultimate squad to roll down the ramp, Deceuninck – Quick-Step went through the Avenida del Agua checkpoint eight seconds in arrears, but upped the pace in the second part of the 13.4k m stage, avoiding the slippery roads that had previously caused several crashes, as well as another team’s car badly parked in a corner with 1700 meters to go.
On the line, our riders had a deficit of just two seconds on Astana, who took the win, being clocked in 14:51 after averaging over 54km/h, an impressive result for the Wolfpack, considering the conditions that added too much excitement to the opening stage of the race.
“We didn’t start too fast and we were a couple of seconds behind at the first intermediate, but we still had the entire team and pushed hard in the last five kilometers. There were many incidents on the course that were out of our control, and these impacted on the outcome. We would have liked to win, but at the end of the day, we are happy that nobody crashed”, sports director Wilfried Peeters said.
Photo credit: ©Justin Setterfield/ Getty Images
James Knox 
