Cort Nielsen follows Matthews wheel-tracks in Vuelta a Espana with sprint victory in Madrid
Orica-BikeExchange claim fourth stage win of race
Orica-Bike Exchange ended the Vuelta a Espana on the highest note possible as they claimed their fourth stage win and their second with Denmark's Magnus Cort Nielsen as he continued his run of breakthrough Grand Tour success.
Already victorious in the stage to Gandia, his first win at WorldTour level, in Madrid the young Danish rider snapped up his second stage in the Vuelta after outpowering Daniele Bennati (Tinkoff) with a powerful surge for the line. Fans with longer memories recollected that back in 2013, a certain Michael Matthews had made his debut in Grand Tour victories with two stage wins in the Vuelta, one of them in Puebla de Sanabria in the first week, and another on the very same Paseo de la Castellana boulevard finish in Madrid where Cort Nielsen took his second in the 2016 Spanish race on Sunday.
"He's a great rider, one of the guys in the team I look up to and of course I dream about getting similar results to what he's already done," Cort Nielsen said after taking the stage when asked about Matthews.
Asked to compare his first stage victory in Gandia with the second in Madrid, the Dane said he viewed both as "amazing. It's difficult to say which was better, each one is very special.
"Today [Sunday] it was a tricky finish with all the road furniture. But [team-mate] Jens Keukeleire"- himself a stage winner in Bilbao - "did me a great leadout here, maybe a bit long, but I managed to squeeze through, find a gap, and I got the win."
As for where he goes from here, Cort Nielsen argued that "I have options for the sprints and options for the Classics. These weren't maybe the world's hardest bunch sprints, so I will have to think about what my options are."
For now, he can celebrate not one, but two, sprint victories in cycling's third Grand Tour - just like Michael Matthews, three years ago.
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Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.