La Vuelta a Espana 2023: Kaden Groves avoids chaos at finish to sprint to victory on Stage 4 in Tarragona

“Today is a tricky finish with a little uphill. But if you see how Kaden Groves is going in the Barcelona stage – he’s the guy to beat and I expect him to win today.”

Tipped by race leader Remco Evenepoel to take the spoils, Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) lived up to his billing as the pre-stage favourite with a fine win in Tarragona. The Australian benefited from a near-flawless lead-out from his “super aggressive” team before rounding Colombian rival Juan Sebastian Molano (UAE Team Emirates) with a late surge on the home straight.

A crash on a tight turn in the final kilometre saw Dutchman Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost) hit the deck and hold up Groves’ team-mate Robbe Ghys. The resulting split made it a two-horse race for the spoils as Molano launched early and with real venom on the slightly ramped finale.

But Groves kept his cool and tackled the final corner before powering past Molano to take the second Vuelta stage win of his career – and add to his Giro d’Italia stage win from earlier in the season. Belgium’s Edward Theuns (Lidl-Trek) was a distant third ahead of compatriots Milan Menten (Lotto Dstny) and Dries van Gestel (TotalEnergies).

Defending champion Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) finished strongly in 12th place to defend his red jersey after avoiding another high-speed crash which tore through the peloton with around four kilometres remaining. Notable casualties from that flashpoint were the Colombian Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain-Victorious), Ireland’s Eddie Dunbar (Jayco-AlUla) and French sprinter Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) – the latter finishing eight minutes down despite seeming to be in some pain.

Belgium’s Evenepoel will enter Wednesday’s fifth stage with a five-second lead over Spain’s Enric Mas (Movistar). French debutant Lenny Martinez (Groupama-FDJ) is in third place at 11 seconds while Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard, the double Tour de France champion, is in fourth at 31 seconds.

On a day lacking in drama save for the frantic final kilometres, Argentina’s Eduardo Sepulveda (Lotto Dstny) moved into the lead of the king of the mountains classification after taking maximum points over two categorised climbs in a three-man breakaway that never held more than two minutes over the pack.

By taking over the blue polka dot jersey from Evenepoel, Sepulveda became the first rider from Argentina to lead any of the jersey classifications in a Grand Tour.

After riding clear of the pack inside the opening few kilometres, Sepulveda combined with Spanish duo David Gonzalez (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) and Ander Okamika (Burgos-BH) in the breakaway, which was eventually reeled in with 20km to go.

The pace was high towards the end of the 184km stage from Andorra to the Catalonian coast, with the large crash that marred the finale happening just inside the final five kilometres at a pinch point on the slip-road of a motorway.

While all the big favourites managed to avoid the incident, Colombian climber Buitrago hit the ground with considerable force and dropped out of the top 10 after coming home over two minutes in arrears.

In the perilous jostling for positions ahead of the ramped finale, Dutch youngster Van den Berg knocked shoulders with Molano and then ran a tight corner wide to skid into the barriers and cause a small split on the nose of the pack.

This handed the initiative to the two men out ahead. And just when Molano looked to have made the winning move, Groves, after a quick check over his shoulder, put his foot down and delivered the goods. The fastest finisher behind solo winner Andreas Kron in Sunday’s second stage to Barcelona, Groves showed just why Evenepoel marked him out as the man to beat on Tuesday.

“It was actually a really hard day with only DSM and ourselves to control it. I had to use two guys just to control the breakaway and we used a lot of energy. But my team was fantastic today – super aggressive and always there on time. It paid off with the victory,” Groves said after securing Alpecin’s 24th win of the season.

“Sebas [Molano] went full from the bottom with 350 metres to go and I was luckily patient enough and strong enough to close the gap with around 100 metres to go. I was confident I could pass him because he led out from very early. On a finish like that, which is super tough and long, I thought he would have to be on a really good day to beat me.”

Groves will have a chance to double up on Wednesday with the 186.5km Stage 5 from Morella to Burriana, which features numerous hills and a single Cat.2 climb ahead of a flat and fast finish on the Costa del Sol.