Kiwi star George Bennett moved back into the top-10 riders on general classification after the first week of the Vuelta a Espana – the final Grand Tour of the year.

George gained 43 seconds on the peloton on stage 7 to Aramon Formigal after finishing in the chasing breakaway group behind stage winner Michael Woods (EF Pro Cycling). He paired with teammate Sepp Kuss to make the strong move to jump back into the top-10, now 2m39s behind overall leader Richard Carapaz.

The plan is to move the New Zealand climbing speciallist into GC reckoning to provide a double threat along with team leader Primoz Roglic, given the other leading teams only have a single GC challenger at this stage.

"The closer we can get George up there, the better for the mountain stages to come," Kuss told Cycling News. "Like we saw today, the more guys you have high up on GC, you can put a lot of pressure on the other teams.”

“For George and myself, we were more marking Valverde and I think either way we were going to be followed a lot on that final climb. For guys like George and I it's hard to win on a finish like this so it's good to get him up on GC and have that card to play."

For Roglic it was a good day. “The pace was very high from the start. The wind certainly played a big role. It was nice to see how offensive we have raced as a team today. It was a great start to the week for us. We didn’t win the stage, but GC-wise we have done well with George. Hopefully we can continue this way of racing into the next days.”

Photo Credit: Team Jumbo Visma