The Queen stage of the Basque Country delivers every year and the 2024 edition was no exception. A strong team performance from UAE Emirates launched their young superstar Juan Ayuso, who won his first World Tour stage race.
After Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič, Jay Vine, Stef Cras, Mikel Landa, Jonas Vingegaard and other riders crashed out of the race, Mattias Skjelmose was the leader of Basque Country before the Queen stage. With UAE Emirates and Juan Ayuso being 4 seconds behind the Dane it was clear that the UCI number one ranked team would try something on the final stage.
UAE Emirates sent Sjoerd Bax and Igor Arrieta in the early breakaway both of whom would later be used as satellite riders. But that was not all. On Krabelin (5 km, 9.5%) Marc Soler attacked the peloton and gained a lead over his rivals. Soler was close to Skjelmose in GC and climbed Krabelin in 15:45 min, pushing 6.44 ᵉW/Kg. Skjelmose and the GC group climbed it 50 seconds slower holding 6.01 ᵉW/Kg. The breakaway was around two minutes ahead of Soler when he reached the top but with the help of his teammate Bax he caught up in the valley before Izua.
With Arrieta and Soler ahead, it was clear that Juan Ayuso and/or Isaac del Toro would try to attack on the Arrate climb (4.1 km, 9.37%) from Izua side. Jonas Vingegaard on this climb last year did 7.46 ᵉW/Kg for 11:17 min, reaching the All-Time Top 25 trend-line. The Dane on Izua used his teammates as satellite riders and UAE tried to copy these tactics for Ayuso, with Soler and Arrieta ahead.
Ayuso set the fastest time on Arrate-Izua today, doing 7.01 ᵉW/Kg for 11:37 min. The Spaniard dropped all his rivals and at the top of the climb slowed down to wait for Soler as there were left 27 kilometres in the stage, of mostly rolling terrain. Skjelmose and Carlos Rodriguez lost 13 seconds, doing 6.92 ᵉW/Kg and caught Ayuso on the descent. Oscar Onley was the only rider from the early breakaway who could keep up with GC favourites, doing 6.60 ᵉW/Kg for 12:21 min. An impressive performance considering he spent much more energy than Del Toro, McNulty and Bilbao earlier in the stage, all of whom did 0.01 ᵉW/Kg less than Onley from GC group.
There was Urkaregi (5 km, 4.6%) left after Izua and surprisingly Skjelmose missed the attack from Ayuso who was later joined by Rodriguez. The two Spaniards worked together, while Skjelmose was left with Onley and Ayuso's teammate Soler. Rodriguez could not win the race overall but a stage victory and 2nd place in the GC was good enough to work with his compatriot.
Ayuso won this cursed edition of Basque Country, while Rodriguez moved to 2nd place, beating Skjelmose by 1 second because Soler out-sprinted the Dane and took the four remaining bonus seconds. UAE finished 1st, 4th, 5th and 7th in GC, obtaining 920 UCI points from McNulty, Soler, Del Toro and Ayuso GC alone.
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