Cycling-Britain's Brennan wins Vuelta stage two, Pogacar keeps overall lead

Britain's Matt Brennan sprinted to victory in the second ​stage of the Vuelta a Espana on ​Sunday 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 214-kilometer 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 after going solo with around 50 km remaining and taking six bonus seconds by winning the intermediate sprint.

All he had to do was stay near the front of the main group and ⁠hope ​Pogacar did not win the ⁠stage, but as the race funnelled into Manosque, he found himself badly positioned towards the back of the stretched-out peloton. With around ⁠1.5 km 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." "We started off with the ambition of Wout trying to get in the red jersey today. We ⁠had that plan and then I was always going to be in the background for the sprint in ⁠case that didn't work and ⁠that’s exactly what happened."

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.