Australia’s Jai Hindley is still in contention to finish on the podium at the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a ahead of its conclusion this weekend.<\/p>\n
Hindley is fourth overall following stage 19, which was won by Belgium’s Jasper Philipsen.<\/p>\n
Dane Jonas Vingegaard is the overall leader, 44 seconds ahead of Portugal’s Jo\u00e3o Almeida.<\/p>\n
Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) retained third place overall and will start the penultimate stage 2 minutes and 43 seconds behind Vingegaard.<\/p>\n
Hindley is 49 seconds adrift of Pidcock.<\/p>\n
The Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe rider can still finish in the top three, while fellow Australian Jay Vine is the frontrunner to claim the King of the Mountains jersey as he holds a 20-point advantage over Vingegaard.<\/p>\n
Hindley and Vine placed 35th and 150th, respectively, in stage 19.<\/p>\n
Philipsen made it three wins at this year’s race as he sprinted clear at the end of stage 19, with Vingegaard adding 4 seconds to his advantage over Almeida.<\/p>\n
After 160 kilometres of relatively flat riding, Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) burst to the front near the finish and never looked like being caught.<\/p>\n
Denmark’s Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) was the first to make his move but could not resist Philipsen as he crossed the line in second place with Venezuela’s Orluis Aular (Movistar) third.<\/p>\n
“It was a really tough finish, and after 11 days not going this deep, it hurts,” Philipsen told TNT Sport.<\/p>\n
“The final 250 metres was more flat, but before that the team did amazing.<\/p>\n
“I was struggling in the middle, but I pushed through, and when I saw the finish line, it was really nice. We will try to repeat on Sunday. It’s been a tough three weeks.”<\/p>\n
Vingegaard (Team Visma-Lease a Bike) finished safely in the bunch after picking up an unexpected 4 bonus seconds at the intermediate sprint in Salamanca, 60km from the finish, as main rival Almeida was caught napping.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s penultimate stage is a brutal mountainous route featuring more than 4,000m of climbing, offering the last realistic chance for Almeida to catch Vingegaard.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s Jai Hindley is still in contention to finish on the podium at the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,67721,95213,6495,85,39562],"class_list":{"0":"post-138856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-jasper-philipsen","12":"tag-jay-hindley","13":"tag-jonas-vingegaard","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-vuelta-a-espana"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}