2020 vibes: Hirschi beats Alaphilippe after thriller in San Sebastian, Vingegaard and Kuss unable to make an impact

Normally held the Saturday after the Tour de France, every four years the WorldTour race in Northern Spain must make way for the Olympic Games. This was the case in 2024, as the Saturday following La Grande Boucle was reserved for the Olympic time trial in Paris, won by Remco Evenepoel, who is also the reigning Clasica San Sebastian champion. The Belgian did not travel to the Basque Country, ensuring we would see a new winner this year.

The organizers were able to feature Jonas Vingegaard, notably as the Dane last raced in a one-day event in 2022: the Tour of Lombardy that year. Nonetheless, it was a significant boost for the leader of Visma | Lease a Bike, which also started with Tour of Burgos winner Sepp Kuss, to race again in the Basque Country: just four months ago, he had a severe crash in a descent during the tour of that region, with well-known consequences.

Anyway, moving to the present: besides Vingegaard, the start list for San Sebastian was still filled with high quality riders. Alaphilippe, Hirschi, Simon Yates, Daniel Felipe Martínez, Giulio Ciccone, Maxim Van Gils... just to name a few for this WorldTour race, which had pulled another rabbit out of the hat with the daunting Pilotegi final climb (with sections up to 27% steep).

Just past 10:30 AM, the competitors embarked from Donostia—the Basque name for San Sebastian—on a challenging 236-kilometer journey. Right from the get-go, the Alpecin-Deceuninck team was noticeably proactive, with Stan Van Tricht, Tobias Bayer, Gianni Vermeersch, and Axel Laurance attempting early breakaways in the race’s initial flat segment. However, it was the Andazarrate climb that truly began to separate the contenders.

There, Alpecin-Deceuninck couldn't manage to get anyone into the breakaway of the day, but given the strength of that group, it was no disgrace. Simon Carr (EF), Warren Barguil (dsm-firmenich PostNL), Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier (Lidl-Trek), Sylvain Moniquet (Lotto-Dstny), Davide de Pretto (Jayco AlUla), Jésus Herrada (Cofidis), Thibault Guernalec (Arkéa - B&B Hotels), Jésus Herrada (Cofidis), Adne Holter (Uno-X), Pierre Latour (TotalEnergies), and Ben Zwiehoff (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) are all recognized as strong riders.

Aware of the breakaway’s potential, teams like Soudal Quick-Step, Visma | Lease a Bike, and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe (despite Zwiehoff’s involvement) dispatched riders to maintain the gap at roughly three minutes. As the race drew within seventy kilometers of the finish, the peloton swept through San Sebastian, gearing up for the climactic ascent of the famous Jaizkibel.

The early television coverage emerged here, where the yellow and black of Visma | Lease a Bike was notably aggressive at the front of the peloton. Dylan van Baarle pushed hard, forcing the front riders to their limits: strongman Carr then chose to break away solo on the slopes of the Jaizkibel, remaining the last man standing against the impressive train from Visma | Lease a Bike.

The race entered a new phase on the Erlaitz climb (3.8 kilometers at 10.7 percent). Florian Lipowitz launched the first attack from the peloton, to which Alaphilippe had a response up his sleeve. The team leader from Soudal Quick-Step, who was announced on Saturday to be leaving the team, was joined by Pavel Sivakov of UAE-Team Emirates. Sivakov ultimately remained alone.

At that point, Yates (Jayco AlUla) was one of the first top riders to drop back, soon followed by his future teammate Vingegaard. The Dane was dropped like a hot potato, but he was certainly not alone: only ten riders remained at the front, including Hirschi and Brandon McNulty, leaving Sivakov to forge ahead solo.

The Lotto-Dstny pair, Andreas Kron and Lennert Van Eetvelt, crested the Erlaitz climb alongside big names like Alaphilippe, Michael Woods (Israel-Premier Tech), Jhonatan Narváez (INEOS), Neilson Powless (EF), and Kevin Vermaerke (dsm-firmenich PostNL). This also signaled that Vingegaard, along with Kuss, had missed the opportunity to make a move on the grueling climb.

The American, along with many others, could not catch up in the descent from the Erlaitz, where Lotto-Dstny’s Van Gils took the lead in the chasing group and thus controlled the gap to Sivakov. Behind the Belgian, the remaining members of the UAE-Team Emirates did their part to block in the group of about twenty riders, but Van Gils managed to keep the gap at a steady twenty seconds approaching the steep Pilotegi climb.

With just nine kilometers left, the race hit the formidable final climb. Alaphilippe positioned himself at the front early, quickly catching Sivakov with Hirschi right behind him. McNulty, Narváez, and Lidl-Trek’s Patrick Konrad soon joined them, but the toughest part of the climb lay ahead. The pace slowed to no more than ten kilometers per hour, a speed at which climber Van Eetvelt thrived.

Just before the summit, Alaphilippe launched an extra push, followed again by Hirschi. These two skilled descenders then plunged into the descent, during which the anxious Alaphilippe narrowly avoided a crash by colliding with Hirschi—who, like himself, is linked to Tudor until 2025. Once at the bottom, the gap to Van Eetvelt was ten seconds, which proved sufficient for the victory.

Hirschi forced his opponent to lead and delayed his sprint, but it proved strong enough to outpace Alaphilippe. Van Eetvelt impressively finished third.