Kaden Groves continued exactly where he had left off in the 2023 Vuelta a España on Sunday as the Australian sprinter secured both his first win of the season and his first since he took a hat-trick of stages in last year’s race.
The Alpecin-Deceuninck fast man has not had the easiest of years, with sickness and injuries hampering his chances until the Vuelta.
But even though sprint stages are notoriously thin on the ground in this year’s edition of the race – at the most optimistic of counts there are just four in total, three in the first week and one in the third - Groves not only opted to come to Spain, but he justified his decision at the first possible opportunity.
The 25-year-old did not have the easiest of run-ins, either, to the technical, uphill sprint in Ourém, due to being isolated from his teammates as they suffered a series of mechanicals and other incidents.
But Groves has already established himself as more than capable of fighting a solo battle and on tough terrain, and as he surged past Wout Van Aert, the Australian proved once again that even when the Vuelta a España is on foreign terrain like in Portugal, he’s still in his element.
“I saw the route and my results already show I can survive these hard stages,” Groves told reporters afterwards. “It’s always a tough one here, but I came through okay.”
“My teammates were unlucky with their mechanicals and that really changed things because I’d planned to go for it from the front. But in the end [Edoardo] Affini went for it, and I could use that to get into the position I wanted.”
Though almost all the sprints of the Vuelta, such as they are, are in the first week of the race, Groves said he has no intention of getting an early flight home. “I do plan to finish,” he said, “I don’t have so many race days because of injuries, so I also want to see what happens when I get in some breakaways.”
Groves is clearly in flying form, and he said that he’d come into the race with an identical build-up to 2023, barring his participation last year in the World Championships during their August slot. He did an altitude training camp at Tignes in the Alps, just like in 2023, and then came straight across to Portugal for the Vuelta start.
However, he was guarded about his chances of keeping the green jersey – he currently leads the points ranking ahead of Van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) and won the classification outright in the Vuelta in 2023 – given the extremely hilly terrain that is coming up.
“I don’t think winning it for a second time is possible,” he reasoned. “Last year I won the jersey in the intermediate sprints and this time I’d have to get through some really hard mountains for those points.”
The Australian was equally uncertain about the possibility of going for a second straight win on Monday, which has a rugged first section, including a cat. 2 climb, before flattening out notably in the last 80 kilometres. In any case, a first win for Groves is now in the bag, both in the Vuelta and in the season, and, particularly given the dearth of sprints this year in Spain, that surely already makes his participation here a major success story.
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