{"id":750544,"date":"2026-08-26T17:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T17:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/750544\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T17:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T17:48:11","slug":"vuelta-a-espana-matthew-brennan-scores-second-sprint-victory-on-stage-five-vuelta-a-espana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/750544\/","title":{"rendered":"Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a: Matthew Brennan scores second sprint victory on stage five | Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a"},"content":{"rendered":"

The British rider and Grand Tour debutant Matthew Brennan of Visma-Lease a Bike sprinted to a second stage victory of the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/a> in Roquetes.<\/p>\n

Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte expertly led out their 21-year-old teammate at the end of stage five, and the youngster confidently demonstrated his devastating speed again to conclude the 173.4km route from Falset. Brennan has two victories from two sprint opportunities at the final Grand Tour of the season.<\/p>\n

Jordi Meeus (Red Bull\u2013Bora\u2013Hansgrohe) was second and Vincenzo Albanese (EF Education\u2013EasyPost) third on the day, while Tadej Pogacar<\/a> (UAE-Team Emirates XRG) safely maintained his commanding 3min 21sec general classification lead.<\/p>\n

A five-rider breakaway escaped early: Walter Calzoni (Pinarello Q36.5), Stefan K\u00fcng (Tudor), Mattia Gaffuri (Picnic PostNL) and Diego Uriarte (Equipo Kern Pharm) joined Fredrik Dversnes (Uno-X Mobility) at the front after the Norwegian rider attacked solo.<\/p>\n

K\u00fcng soon dropped back to the peloton, leaving a four-man breakaway, but they were caught by the chasing bunch with around 100km remaining. It was Lidl-Trek who upped the pace and shut the escapees down on a blowy day when crosswinds and potential splits in the bunch were a concern.<\/p>\n

On the first day of this year\u2019s race staged entirely on Spanish roads, Ethan Hayter (Soudal Quick-Step) took maximum points at the intermediate sprint, at Tivenys, after 114.7km. Hayter, narrowly denied victory on stage one<\/a> by Pogacar, had previously looked in danger of being dropped amid hectic racing in strong winds.<\/p>\n

Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek \u2013 who would have expected to compete in the bunch sprint \u2013 was dropped on the category-three Puerto de Pa\u00fcls climb, and the powerful Visma-Lease a Bike team dominated the final stages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s better than a normal day job, it\u2019s fantastic,\u201d said Brennan. \u201cSecond one in the bag, first Grand Tour \u2026 I\u2019m just very thankful to finish it off again, and I think the boys are quite relieved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt [the team performance] was pretty spot on. We had the two boys pulling on the front until the final few kilometres. Then Wout and Chris are the best guys you can have in that situation \u2026 glad we could finish with the arms in the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn this type of terrain, it works really nicely \u2026 these guys are just so strong \u2026 it gives you the confidence to go on and achieve more.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Van Aert told TNT Sports: \u201cWhen you have Matt in a group like that, it\u2019s the best card to play, and I don\u2019t even need to see the replay to see how he finished that one off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if it feels just as good to see Brennan win as when he wins a race himself, Van Aert smiled and said: \u201cIt comes close.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s 177.5km stage six, from Alcossebre to Castell\u00f3, is a medium mountain stage with 3,080m of climbing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British rider and Grand Tour debutant Matthew Brennan of Visma-Lease a Bike sprinted to a second stage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-750544","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\/750544","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=750544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}