With Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte willing to give up their own chances to work for Matthew Brennan, Visma is on a roll so far at the Vuelta a España.
Kristof Ramon, Cor Vos
Jonas Vingegaard’s absence from the Vuelta a España may have all but guaranteed a shoo-in overall victory for Tadej Pogačar, but that hasn’t kept Vingegaard’s Visma-Lease a Bike teammates from reveling in glories of their own in this first week of the season’s final Grand Tour. Five stages into the race, rising star Matthew Brennan already has two wins to his name.
Seeing as stage 3 was called off in a hailstorm, that’s good enough for a 50% hit rate so far – not bad for a Grand Tour debutant and his team, which also has former Vuelta winner Sepp Kuss positioned to fight for a spot on the overall podium.
Perhaps it isn’t a huge surprise that a team so stacked with fast-finishing talents at this Vuelta would have gotten off to such a strong start, but ahead of the race, it wasn’t entirely clear whether it would be Brennan or Van Aert getting these early opportunities. As it turns out, everything has gone according to plan thus far for Visma, which deserves credit for managing its many stars so well in the early goings of this race. As Movistar and any number of other squads can tell you, that’s more easily said than done.
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