The penultimate rider in the race, American Brandon McNulty, got the 2024 Vuelta off to a perfect start by winning the individual time trial on the first stage. He also pocketed the first red leader’s jersey. First at the halfway point, Wout van Aert finished third.
The Vuelta started this Saturday with a 12 km flat individual time trial in Lisbon. The opportunity, first of all, for specialists in the exercise like Joshua Tarling et Wout van Aert to distinguish themselves. The opportunity, then, for the leaders to create the first gaps. If some like John Almeida or Primoz Roglic hoped to be among the winners of the day, others like Sepp Kiss et Cian Uitjebroeks had one major objective: to limit the loss of time.
As is often the case, the best in the individual exercise were not expected to be among the first on the starting list. This allowed Edward Affini to achieve the first reference time which he managed to maintain for several minutes. With a three-second lead during the intermediate time, Tarling thought he would do better but the Briton stumbled by less than three tenths of a second.
The surprise then came from the Czech Mathias Vacek who took the best time at the intermediate but held on well to have a five-second lead over Affini at the finish. It all came down to the last two riders involved: Brandon McNulty and van Aert. At the first intermediate, WVA was six tenths of a second ahead of Vacek and just over two seconds ahead of McNulty. At the finish, McNulty managed to do better by arriving two seconds ahead of Vacek and van Aert, third. The American therefore takes the red jersey of leader while Roglic and Almeida, the only leaders in the top 10, do the right thing. All is not lost for WVA who is three seconds behind in the general classification but who could well recover it during one of the next two stages thanks to the bonus seconds.