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It was German climber Lennard Kämna who came through an eventful stage of La Vuelta on top, as mudslides on the final climb saw the race for the general classification neutralised, and echelons threatened to blow apart the race on a number of occasions.
The early kilometres of the stage saw Jumbo-Visma break up the race in the crosswinds, with riders caught in chasing groups over the road for the first 50km.
The Jumbo-Visma team, with the exception of Robert Gesink were off the front of the race, crucially accompanied by Soudal-QuickStep duo Remco Evenepoel and Mattia Cattaneo, with Bora-Hansgrohe trio Aleksandr Vlasov, Nico Denz, and Emanuel Buchmann, and Bahrain Victorious rider Matevz Govekar.
Their lead got out to a maximum of 45 seconds, but with still with 150 kilometres to go, it was unlikely that the move would stick, and the infernal pace was called off at the base of the Puerto de Casas la Marina la Perdiz.
As things calmed down on the first climb of the day, the breakaway went clear, with Kämna proving the strongest from the eventual eight-man break that formed.
The wind struck again in the main bunch at 80km to go, with Jumbo-Visma and Soudal-QuickStep pushing the pace once more, splitting up the peloton for another 30km before the race came back together.
Most of the contenders for the red jersey found their way into the 21-strong formation at the front, with just Lenny Martinez (Groupama-FDJ) and Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious) missing out from the top-10.
Up front, Kämna made the decisive move on the final climb of the day after attacks from Australian Chris Hamilton (dsm-firmenich) and Matteo Sobrero (Jayco-AlUla) had dramatically thinned down the group. He pushed clear, leaving Sobrero and Hamilton to take the minor placings as Kämna added to his stage wins at the 2022 Giro d’Italia and 2020 Tour de France.
"I am very happy with this. I have worked very hard in recent months and am happy to be on the podium again and to win here," Kämna said.
"I skipped the Tour de France because I wanted to win a stage here. We succeeded and that is why I'm very happy."
Kämna timed his move for a moment when the race was relatively quiet after the frenetic start to the stage.
"I hoped to push on and have as much energy as possible for when everything came together again. At that moment I noticed that I still had power left.
"The climb was very tricky. It was always up and down and that made it difficult to get away. I had a gap and then I went full throttle. I tried to break it by going two minutes over my limit.”
Back in the GC group, times were taken at 2.05km from the finish, meaning the toughest sections of the summit finish were neutralised, and there weren’t many changes to the overall, with Poels dropping out of contention and Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious) also ceding some time.
La Vuelta has a rest day tonight, but the action will continue on SBS VICELAND with the Stage 10 time trial from 10.50pm AEST on Tuesday.
