{"id":411830,"date":"2026-02-06T21:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T21:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/411830\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T21:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T21:48:10","slug":"it-wasnt-how-i-imagined-my-first-pro-win-american-ineos-grenadiers-rider-sprints-to-maiden-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/411830\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It wasn’t how I imagined my first pro win’ \u2013 American Ineos Grenadiers rider sprints to maiden victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ineos Grenadiers rider Andrew ‘AJ’ August outgunned his breakaway rivals, and the peloton bearing down on them, to win stage three of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana<\/a> for what was his first professional victory.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old followed three other attackers in the final kilometres of the 158km stage to San Vincente del Raspeig, having already helped bring a different break back in the service of his team’s sprinter Ben Turner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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With the peloton \u2013 including Turner \u2013 never far behind, August sat on his three fellow escapees all the way to the finish, before launching his sprint at around 250m to go and taking a win that was unlikely to have been popular with his breakaway companions. The peloton was led home by Biniam Girmay<\/a> (NSN Cycling), ahead of Turner, four seconds back.<\/p>\n

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“I didn’t expect a win at all today because with 50km to go, my team says to me, ‘AJ, time to go to the front and pull back the breakaway’,” August said afterwards.<\/p>\n

“So I stayed in the peloton then tried, and reached the attack. I had no reason to ride because we had Ben [Turner] behind for the sprint so I used that to my advantage and made the win happen.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t how I imagined my first professional win but I’d saved a lot of energy by not working full gas, but it was not my role to contribute. So I took advantage of being fresh, sprinted from the back and crossed the line first.”<\/p>\n

August has come close previously in the little over two years he has been at Ineos Grenadiers<\/a>, with two second places on stages at last year’s Tour of Austria, but this is his first victory.<\/p>\n

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The result sees Girmay preserve the lead he took on general classification on the first day, with August’s breakaway companion \u00c5dne Holter (Uno-X Mobility) jumping 53 places to slot into second ahead of third placed Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).<\/p>\n

It follows yesterday’s time trial stage to Alginet, which was won by Remco Evenepoel <\/a>(Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe<\/a>) ahead of his team-mate Aleksandr Vlasov but neutralised for the GC because of high winds.<\/p>\n

The race continues on Saturday with a lumpy, 172km outing from La Nuc\u00eda to Teulada Moraira, and finishes on Friday in Valencia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ineos Grenadiers rider Andrew ‘AJ’ August outgunned his breakaway rivals, and the peloton bearing down on them, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-411830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}