Until Morale Improves, the Raids Will Continue
The Vuelta GC goes through another trip through the tumble dryer
This is some wild-ass shit, guys. Last week, Ben O’Connor took out a surprising five-minute GC lead at the Vuelta when he got into a break and the peloton either could not or would not manage the gap.
From that point, I thought the narrative of the Vuelta would be pretty straightforward: O’Connor’s lead was of such size as to look nearly insurmountable, considering the lack of a Tadej Pogačar or Jonas Vingegaard in this race and O’Connor’s own grand tour GC bona fides. But he took said lead not even a week into the Vuelta. Of the 14 remaining stages, 13 of them contained at least some non-zero amount of climbing that Primož Roglič could use to chip away at that lead. The exception: the Stage 21 time trial into Madrid, which would advantage Roglič even more.
The narrative unfolding, then, was pretty straightforward. O’Connor and his Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale team1 would have to limit their losses. Four minutes and 51 seconds divided by 14 stages is just under 21 seconds a stage.
Considering that Roglič has owned the rampas inhumanas and even won a Vuelta GC by gaming the bonus seconds awarded for stage wins, 21 seconds a stage doesn’t sound like much at all. On Friday, Roglič took back just six bonus seconds. On Saturday, he struck a proper blow: 46 seconds on the road and 10 more in bonuses for winning the stage.
The new target, with 12 stages to go: 19 seconds and change.
It might have been premature to reduce this race to a two-man battle in my mind.2 But Roglič, with his felicity on intermediate climbs and extremely steep pitches, was born for the Vuelta. I mean, he’s won it every time he’s had the freedom to pursue his own GC goals and gotten to the end in one piece.
But even without the two best stage racers in the world,3 this is a strong, varied field. Nevertheless, I viewed Roglič as the strongest rider among them. Could Adam Yates or João Almeida or Enric Mas or Carlos Rodríguez or Richard Carapaz or Sepp Kuss outride O’Connor over the final two weeks of the race? Absolutely. But my reasoning was this: If one of them could do it, surely Roglič would do it first. And O’Connor already had that massive head start.
So what the hell happened on Sunday?
As I wrote last week, Stage 9, with its three Category 1 climbs, was built for long attacks to take big gaps. And when an extremely strong breakaway formed, the only team with the firepower to reel it back in was UAE.
Unfortunately, UAE had just had its leader, Almeida, abandon the race with COVID. So it went all-in on the break, putting Jay Vine, Marc Soler, and Yates in the leading group. And because all three of the UAE escapees were at least nine minutes behind O’Connor, nobody cared enough to reel it back in.
Except the initial breakaway not only had great climbers, but guys like Stefan Kung and Wout van Aert who could pull in the valleys, and multi-rider delegations from UAE and FDJ. Carapaz quickly realized this was where the action was going to be, and jumped the gap before the first of two ascents of Alto de Hazallanas. EF had two riders in the break—James Shaw and Darren Rafferty—and, realizing that neither would be a factor for the stage with Yates and David Gaudu out there, had them drag Carapaz back to the second group on the road.
And by the end of the first climb of the Alto de Hazallanas, it was the second group, because Yates had fucked off, never to be seen again. Because of the size and composition of the break, and the quality of the riders therein, the team aspect of the stage was basically over with a full climb left to go.
It was every man for himself.
Carapaz briefly had an alliance with Gaudu and two other riders, but when he came to the foot of the final climb having been on the front of the group for most of their time together, he too set off alone.
So that’s how it was for the final 30 kilometers or so: Yates alone, Carapaz about two minutes behind, the peloton4 about four minutes behind that.
I don’t want to act like Roglič and O’Connor were unaware that some really good GC riders were putting the length of an entire Yes single into them, but that’s how they were riding. The race leader and the race favorite, having been separated the day before, just marked each other, with Gall doing most of the pacing.
Even from their group, there were signs of weakness. Enric Mas put close to a minute into those two, but gave it all back on the descent and was caught at the finish. Actually, to be more accurate, he almost died on the descent; Mas got too deep into a corner and locked his front brake, kicked his back wheel entirely off the ground, and would’ve run out of road, into an Armco barrier, and over the side of a cliff like a cop car in a 1960s heist movie had the Spanish highway department not carved out a narrow gravel runoff area.
I’m genuinely curious what happens to your body after you’ve had your heart do 150 bpm all the live long day, and then all of a sudden you’re about to Otto Lilienthal5 yourself into a ravine. Is there even any adrenaline left at this point?
It’s only by the efforts of his teammates that Roglič came to the line three minutes and 45 seconds behind Yates, because at the summit of the final climb, that gap was closer to six minutes.
In four days, we’ve had three riders exploit Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s inability or unwillingness to control a break, or misjudgment of the danger a break represents when a strong rider comes in several minutes down early in the race. On Thursday, O’Connor gained 22 spots in the GC rankings and six minutes, 47 seconds relative to Roglič, counting bonuses. On Sunday, Yates put four minutes and one second into Roglič and jumped 20 spots on GC. Carapaz, who for all his nearly 90 kilometers of chasing never came within half a mile of Yates, gained two minutes, 16 seconds against Roglič and jumped 15 spots in the standings.
So now Carapaz is in third place, just 39 seconds behind Roglič and four minutes, 32 seconds behind O’Connor. Yates is up to seventh on GC, a further 58 seconds back. Roglič himself struggled to hold the wheel on Sunday’s last climb, and admitted after the stage that the back injury he suffered at the Tour de France is still giving him problems. The vultures are…well, not circling, exactly. More like zooming way off ahead.
And if AG2R and Red Bull want help controlling breakaways, I’m not entirely sure where it’s going to come from when the green light is this on. Intellectually, I feel pretty good about writing off a Sepp Kuss repeat GC win. He’s down in 14th and he’s hemorrhaged time to the other favorites.
But he’s closer to the race lead than Yates was when he woke up on Sunday. If it’s open season for guys between seven and 15 minutes behind to just jump the break with a couple teammates, a dozen different riders could win this race. Which sounds absolutely ludicrous, but after the past few days I don’t know what other conclusion to draw. This race is just uncontrollable.
Read: Mostly Felix Gall
In retrospect, it was absolutely premature, but bear with me I’m doing foreshadowing
Or Remco Evenepoel, if you want to toss him into that category
Or what was left of it
For those of you who don’t get the reference: Lilienthal was a 19th century German engineer famous for his contributions to the design of gliders. The Wright Brothers leaned heavily on his research for their own designs. Lilienthal might have made the first powered flight himself, but in 1896 he was killed in—and I know this is a major shock—a glider crash. In addition to numerous monuments and tributes around the world, Lilienthal is now immortalized in the famous Wikipedia page: List of inventors killed by their own inventions.