Britain’s Matt Brennan sprinted to victory in the second stage of the Vuelta a Espana with overall race favourite Tadej Pogacar holding on to the leader’s red jersey.
Riding his first grand tour, the 21-year-old Visma-Lease a Bike rider laid down the power on the uphill drag to the finish in Manosque after a 214km ride from Monaco and held on comfortably.
Pau Miquel (Bahrain Victorious) was second with Pogacar third across the line.
Pogacar, who won Saturday’s opening time trial by 0.09 seconds from Britain’s Ethan Hayter, will take a nine-second lead over Wout van Aert into Monday’s third stage.
Hayter was part of a small early breakaway and looked destined to take the overall lead when he won the final intermediate sprint for six bonus seconds.
But as the race funnelled into Manosque, he found himself badly positioned towards the back of the stretched-out peloton.
With around 1.5km remaining it appeared that Pogacar and Van Aert would fight it out for the stage victory but Pogacar stepped off the gas and it was Van Aert’s unheralded team mate Brennan who seized the moment to claim his biggest career win.
“We thought there was a nice opportunity to attack in the final,” Brennan, who joined the powerful Dutch Visma-Lease a Bike team’s World Tour squad in 2025, said. “I was super happy to finish it off.”
Brennan is third in the overall standings, 10 seconds behind Pogacar.
Monday takes the riders into the French Pyrenees with a mountain finish in Font Romeu near the Spanish border.
