Lennard Kamna completed his set of Grand Tour stage wins with a solo effort on stage nine of the Vuelta a Espana.
The German [Bora-Hansgrohe] emerged the strongest from an eight-man break on the tough final climb of the hilly stage between Cartagena and Collado de la Cruz de Caravaca.
Kamna's opportunism left behind Matteo Sobrero [Jayco-AlUla] and Chris Hamilton [dsm-firmenich] to add to his stage wins at the 2022 Giro d'Italia and 2020 Tour de France.
"I'm super happy. I worked really hard the last couple of months," Kamna told Eurosport after his ninth career victory.
"It was not always easy after the Giro, a lot of setbacks.
"But I'm so happy that I'm back on the podium and I can take this win.
"It was really tricky at the end because the climb was always going up and down and it was hard to find the moment to drop the others.
"But that moment just comes sometimes and I had a little gap to go through. After that it was just a fight to the end."
General classification times were taken over two kilometres from the finish due to poor weather conditions.
It meant the toughest sections of the summit finish were neutralised on a day when multiple attacks were launched in the crosswinds that blew across the 184.5km stage.
Sepp Kuss continues to carry the leader's red jersey into Monday's rest day, with an advantage of 43 seconds.
Kuss' Jumbo-Visma team-mate Primoz Roglic claimed back two seconds on Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step), who moved from sixth to fourth.
Roglic said: "I'm happy we finished and it was not the finish completely on the top because it was quite tricky with the corners.
"It was a hard climb at the end and I've survived [week one]."
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