Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) sealed overall victory at the Vuelta a Burgos after he finished safely in the main peloton in Condado de Treviño, where Pavel Bittner (Team dsm-firmenich-PostNL) won stage 5 in a bunch sprint.
Kuss had carried a lead of just five seconds over Bittner’s teammate Max Poole into the final day. Despite that slender margin, his overall victory was never really in doubt although DSM did make an attempt to open at the head of the bunch on Poole’s behalf in the final two kilometres.
The overall triumph, forged on the summit finish at Lagunas de Neila, underlined Kuss’ form ahead of the Vuelta a España, where he returns as the defending champion. The American was forced to miss this year’s Tour de France after picking up a COVID-19 infection ahead of the race.
Friday’s final stage was expected to produce a reduced bunched sprint, but daylong escapees Michael Leonard (Ineos) and Patrick Gamper (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) came agonisingly close to pulling off an upset before they were swept up with just over 300m to go.
Leonard and Gamper had escaped in the opening kilometres with Pim Ronhaar (Lidl-Trek), and they struck up a decent working alliance on the rugged terrain between Frías and Condado de Treviño, carrying a lead of more than two minutes into the final 40km.
Jayco-Alula, Movistar and Burgos-BH were among the teams leading the chase, though the Australian squad’s interest in the pursuit ended when Caleb Ewan was dropped on the final climb with a shade over 19km remaining.
By that point, the race had passed through the finish line for the first time, and the escapees had reached the 26km to go mark still holding a lead of 1:30 over the peloton. Despite losing Ronhaar to cramp, Leonard and Gamper pressed on, and they crested the summit of the climb still with half a minute in hand on the chasers.
The climb didn’t provoke any real frissons in the race for the general classification, but there was a series of accelerations in the peloton that required vigilance from Kuss and Poole.
The most telling attack came from Victor Lafay (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), who pressed clear over the top in the company of Davide Piganzoli (Polti-Kometa). They would close to within 20 seconds of Leonard and Gamper, but they couldn’t get much closer and they were caught with 7km remaining.
With 3km to go, Leonard tried to forge clear alone on a false flat, but Gamper was just about able to claw back the Canadian teenager’s effort, and the two escapees entered the final kilometre together, still clutching a lead of a handful of seconds.
Behind, DSM were working to tee up Bittner, but they briefly let Poole drift clear in an attempt to catch out Kuss.
“We had two guys in front, so we let the wheel go just to see,” Bittner explained. “It was not really planned, that was just to force the other guys to chase.”
Leonard and Gamper’s hopes were ultimately dashed within sight of the line, as Ivan Garcia Cortina (Movistar) opened his sprint from distance on the rise towards the finish. For the second time this week, Bittner proved the quickest in the sprint, and the Czech came off Garcia Cortina’s wheel to take the win ahead of Giacomo Nizzolo (Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team).
“I really don’t know what to say, this week has been really unreal,” Bittner said. “A few days ago, I picked up my first victory and to win again is really cool.”
In the final overall standings, Kuss claimed victory from Poole by five seconds, while Finn Fisher-Black (UAE Team Emirates) took third at 34 seconds.
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