Wild Card
This isn't just one race.
Not much has changed since the last edition of this newsletter on Tuesday; Ben O’Connor retains a five-second lead on Primož Roglič, but he’s basically waiting for the Sword of Damocles to fall. Even if O’Connor can follow—or even beat—Roglič in the two coming mountain stages, he’s sure to lose the red jersey in Sunday’s time trial unless he can reverse the tide of the past week and put multiple minutes into the race favorite beforehand.
While we’re on the subject of winning, though, in a grand tour there’s always more to the story than the general classification. It’s one of my favorite things about cycling, that there’s something to be achieved for riders of every shape and size, whether it’s a GC placing, or a stage win, to help a teammate, or even to go down in defeat in a certain style.
The startlist of a grand tour comprises not just the top flight World Tour teams, but a number of wild card entries. These are second-division outfits, at least one of them from the host country.
The unstated challenge to these smaller squads is: We gave you your moment in the sun, don’t fucking waste it. A compelling performance might make one of these teams a fixture at the race—Androni at the Giro, Europcar at the Tour, Caja Rural at the Vuelta—but an anonymous team might not get invited back.
Which brings us to Equipo Kern Pharma. I’m going to make my two obvious jokes here. You can’t stop me.
This team’s sponsor is a Spanish pharmaceutical company, and not Worf’s brother.
It’s been a while since I worked at a print publication, but shouldn’t it be:
E q u i p o K e r n P h a r m a1
Spain has no shortage of venerable ProTour teams to choose from, but Kern Pharma has only been around since 2020. It has one rider on its roster from outside of Spain, and according to ProCycling Stats, it had won just four races in its entire four-and-a-half-season history heading into this year’s Vuelta. I do really like their kits though. It’s a nice color green, and I love red accents on a green sports uniform.
And even then, that’s kind of overstating things. One of those wins was a Spanish time trial national championship; the other three were stages of 2.1-rated races, like Tour de Taiwan2 and Belgrade-Banja Luka, the premier cycling race of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
But they’ve been getting in breakaways, and in the past week or so, it’s started to pay off. Climber Pablo Castrillo won a shock victory in Stage 12, and repeated the feat three days later on Stage 15.
On Thursday, Kern Pharma got not one but three riders, including Castrillo, to stay in the break until the final decisive move. It was a dominating tactical position, comparable to what you’d expect from Visma-Lease a Bike in a cobbled classics race. They could roll attacks recklessly, knowing that any response would bring the other two riders back to the front.
It only really took one effort, though. Steven Kruijswijk launched an attack on the final uphill section before the finish, gaining a few seconds of clear daylight. Enter Urko Berrade, 26, with no professional wins to his name but a series of moderately impressive top-10 GC finishes at second-tier stage races.
Berrade bridged, and then pulled my favorite move in this situation: The drive-by. Don’t stop for a breath, don’t slow down to try to collaborate, just fucking go. And so Berrade went straight over the top, over the crest of the hill, and never saw his pursuers again.
This has been an easy race for breakaways—not just the famous initial break that put O’Connor in red. But as the race has worn on, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe has figured out that pacing all day to control the breakaway is a less productive use of its domestiques’ energy than waiting until a climb and going all-in to launch Roglič. So all the GC action is happening not at the head of the race, but like eight minutes behind the break. That leaves the door open for Kern Pharma.
Between Castrillo and Berrade, this unknown second-tier team has now won three stages out of 18. That’s tied for the most of any team in the race with Alpecin-Deceuninck (Kaden Groves), Visma-Lease a Bike (Wout van Aert) and UAE Team Emirates (one each from Brandon McNulty, Adam Yates and Marc Soler).
Ineos? Nothing. EF? Nothing. Bahrain-Victorious? Nothing. Movistar? Nothing. Soudal Quick-Step? Nothing. Some of those teams have devoted their energies to the GC battle, but Kern Pharma has done better than most of the better-resourced teams.
This is why you invite wild cards to the race. It’s not just about the GC, or the sprint stages. There are opportunities for everyone, if you know where to look.