Pedersen wins Vuelta stage 19, Evenepoel maintains overall lead

:Denmark's Mads Pedersen dominated a bunch sprint to win stage 19 of the Vuelta a Espana in style on Friday - his third victory at this year's race.

Overall race leader Remco Evenepoel of Belgium finished safely in the peloton to maintain his two minutes seven seconds advantage over Spaniard Enric Mas with two days remaining.

Former world champion Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) already held a huge lead in the points category and showed his finishing prowess again to win by a bike length at the end of the 138km stage that started and finished in Talavera de la Reina.

The stage featured two ascents of the category two Puerto del Pielago but was not tough enough to have an impact on the battle for the red jersey, and predictably finished with a bunch sprint through the town.

Miles Scottson (Groupama-FDJ) was the first to make his move but Pedersen, set up perfectly by team mate Julien Bernard, roared around the final corner and hit the front with 150 metres remaining and never looked like being beaten.

Briton Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious) finished strongly for second place with Belgian Gianni Vermeersch (Alpecin-Deceuninck) third.

Pedersen has 379 points ahead of Wright's 174 and will take the green jersey barring anything untoward over the weekend.

"It's never easy in a final like this because it's a lot of good guys in the peloton and if one of them comes with an attack on one of the roundabouts I would be the guy to close it and then it would be hard to sprint, so I was really happy with the speed the boys could keep," Pedersen said.

"Three wins is way more than we came here for, so that's super, super nice. Tomorrow we just have to finish the day and then in (Sunday's finale in) Madrid we have to see how it goes. No matter what,