Sprint ace Jasper Philipsen has bounced back from the crash that prematurely ended his Tour de France, leaving him with a broken collarbone and ribs, as he sprinted to victory on the opening stage of La Vuelta a Espana.
With the great Spanish race making its first ever start in Italy, the star Belgian speedster claimed the red jersey after comfortably outpacing his nearest challengers in Novara following a textbook lead-out from his Alpecin-Deceuninck team in Saturday's (Sunday AEST) bunch finish.
Briton Ethan Vernon, of Israel-Premier Tech, was second and Venezuelan Orluis Aular, of Movistar, came home third, but neither looked close to upsetting the 27-year-old Philipsen, the quickest man in the peloton right now, as he eased to his 14th Grand Tour stage win.
On the largely flat 186.1km ride from Turin to Novara, which had previously hosted two Giro d'Italia finishes, six riders formed a breakaway and opened up a two-minute lead.
Burgos Burpellet's Hugo de la Calle launched a solo attack with 83km to go but he was caught by the peloton with 38km left before the teams set the stage up for the sprint finish which Philipsen finished off with aplomb.
Philipsen, who had also taken the yellow jersey at last month's Tour before a third-stage crash ended up ruling him out of the race, enthused: "Winning is always a nice feeling and definitely when there is a reward like the red jersey, of course it's a nice present.
"We managed to do our lead-out the way we wanted to. In the final kilometre, they executed it perfectly. I saw 175 meters to go and had to start sprinting, I'm really happy it worked out for us.
"After my crash in the Tour, I was really disappointed to be out, it was a setback. This was a nice goal, but I knew we only had one chance because there aren't many opportunities for a sprinter like me at this Vuelta."
Nine of the 10-strong Australian contingent, headed by world road race silver medallist Ben O'Connor (Jayco AlUla) and former Giro d'Italia champ Jai Hindley (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe), safely negotiated the opening day.
But Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates) had a bad day, bringing up the rear of the field nearly three-and-a-half minutes adrift.
