{"id":206193,"date":"2026-09-11T10:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T10:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=206193"},"modified":"2026-09-11T10:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T10:35:09","slug":"brennan-wins-two-more-stages-as-mas-limits-losses-to-stay-in-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2026\/09\/11\/brennan-wins-two-more-stages-as-mas-limits-losses-to-stay-in-front\/","title":{"rendered":"Brennan Wins Two More Stages as Mas Limits Losses to Stay in Front"},"content":{"rendered":"

The two flat stages organisers of the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a scheduled after Monday’s rest day were clearly intended to give the GC contenders a little more time to rest their legs before Thursday’s 32.1 km time trial and, especially, the daunting mountain stages on Friday and Saturday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Visma\u2013Lease a Bike is grateful. The team doesn’t have a viable GC contender \u2013 though former Vuelta winner Sepp Kuss may have been saving himself for a late-stage win \u2013 but they still have Wout van Aert and Matthew Brennan, who are the Lords of the Vuelta Sprint Finishes.<\/p>\n

Brennan makes it four<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Though Tuesday’s stage 16 had lots of ups and downs, geographically speaking, none of them was worth categorising, so it was always going to end in a bunch sprint, especially with Visma making sure the five-rider breakaway never had much of a lead. The group, which again included the tireless Kevin Vermaerke (UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG), never had a gap of more than 2:45 and was caught 23.5 kmfrom the finish line.<\/p>\n

After that, it was just a matter of 23 km before van Aert surged out of the pack with Brennan on his wheel, dropped him off in front of his sprint rivals and watched his 21-year-old teammate register his fourth stage win in his first Grand Tour. It was also Visma’s sixth stage win of this Vuelta, van Aert having won the other two the previous week. Byran Coquard (Cofidis), who is the winner of the only bunch sprint not won by Brennan, finished second while Vito Braet (Lotto Intermarch\u00e9) was third. For good measure, van Aert came in sixth.<\/p>\n

With next year’s Tour de France opening with three stages in the UK, Brennan is hoping that his success in the Vuelta will convince the team’s staff to let him ride in that race. \u201cA UK start next year \u2013 I already said it to the team two years ago when I heard about it \u2013 \u00a0that I’d really like to be there on the start line,\u201dhe said after the stage. \u201cAnd to have guys like Wout and Christophe [Laporte] there also, if we do the same [as we’re doing] here, we can really try to copy what we do and replicate that into a yellow jersey on day one.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was rightly proud of his and the team’s performance. \u201cIt’s unbelievable. Four victories here; the plan was for one,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a team, we’ve won six. I think. I can’t count, we’ve won so many. The stages that we’ve gone for, we’ve really committed to the plan that we had. You’ve seen the boys all day today; they’ve been pushing so much wind, and to finish it off like that, Wout bringing me across the line, basically in a perfect place in such a chaotic final, it was perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether van Aert was the best lead-out man in the world, he said, \u201cYeah, I don’t really think [anyone] can compete. It was a real shame that we lost Christophe, but it’s still unbelievable what we can do when we’re a man down in these type of situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the post-race press conference, he elaborated<\/a> on his dreams for next year’s Tour, the first two stages of which seem to be ideal for sprint finishes. \u201cI’ve seen the first and also the second stage, and the third is quite hard, but there are definitely opportunities to do something within my strengths,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would really like to be on the starting line. I also understand that the best squad has to go with the ambitions the team has, but I think that for the moment, with being successful as a team, we can probably use myself in different ways to help Jonas [Vingegaard] bring out his strengths even more and play the cards.\u201d<\/p>\n

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