Soudal Quick-Step Off to Strong Start in La Vuelta
Defending champion Remco Evenepoel sits only a handful of seconds off the red jersey.
The Soudal Quick-Step team showed great performance in the challenging conditions of the team time trial at the start of La Vuelta. Despite the wet, windy, and dark weather, the team finished just outside the podium by a few hundredths of a second.
The 14.6km stage featured 19 corners and slippery roads, but Andrea Bagioli, Mattia Cattaneo, Remco Evenepoel, Jan Hirt, James Knox, Casper Pedersen, Pieter Serry, and Louis Vervaeke stayed focused and produced an impressive result. They finished six seconds behind stage winners DSM-Firmenich in Barcelona, which hosted the Gran Salida for the first time in over sixty years.
Remco Evenepoel, the World Champion, led the team and gained time on most of his rivals in the general classification. The team completed the stage in 17:36, averaging a speed of 50.45km/h.
Sports director Klaas Lodeweyck commended the team’s performance, considering the challenging conditions. He said, “The boys did a perfect job considering everything and we are proud of them. At the end of the day, we can be content with what we did today; it counts as a good start.”
Photo credit: ©Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images
