Richard Carapaz wins his second stage in the Vuelta the day the red jersey shows excessive weakness
There is still a long way to go and Remco Evenepoel, leader of the competition, faltered this Saturday
It is worth a detail to show the tremendous professionalism of the group Jumbo, the team of Primoz Roglic, the cyclist who does not give up, not even remotely, to win the Vuelta again. In a service area, on the highway, in Andalusia, several masseuses from various teams coincide, all of them members of the so-called race bubble. They fill up the tank of the car, grab a drink and go to the bathroom. Only the masseuses of the Jumbo They do it with the mask on.
directors and mechanics Jumbo, those who circulate behind the peloton, also do not remove their mask when other teams take it more lightly. They are the same ones who were concentrated in Sierra Nevada, not only to prepare at altitude for the Tour they won with Jonas Vingegaardbut to taste today’s stage on the ground, which ends in the Granada ski resort, and also check how hard the ramps of La Pandera were, in Valdepeñas de Jaén, with rough roads, like those of before, where the Tubular is hooked to the asphalt and where the wheels move most clumsily.
There was nothing improvised, everything was prepared, studied and marked with a red pen on the route book with the daily route and where the Jumbo decided that it was the day for Roglic try to Remco Evenepoelto see what happened.
The Jumbo was not worried about our daily escapade, with Richard Carapaz, who scored his second victory in the Vuelta in Jaén. They were going their own way and their thing was to set a frenetic pace first with Robert Gesink and then with Chris Harper to isolate Evenepoel, so that it would only reach the Pandera, when the highway-type asphalt almost became an old cart path. And there he was four kilometers from the finish line when the Slovenian cyclist attacked and when Evenepoel did not answer. “It wasn’t my day and I saw that I couldn’t keep up with Roglic’s pace. It was one of the toughest stages of this Vuelta”confessed the leader.
Roglic demarró with the intention of trying to blow up the Vuelta a day before Sierra Nevada, considered the hardest day of this race, where ports are chained and where if Evenepoel suffers a crisis like the one experienced in Jaén, the situation can be very complicated, because a leader cannot show this excessive weakness at the gates of the third week of competition. And because the rivals, with Roglic to the head, they will not have mercy on him to eat him with potatoes. That’s how hard cycling is… and life itself.
It was 52 seconds that Roglicbonus included, he took out Evenepoel, a time as if the cyclist were the mobile that revives when it has run out of battery and the charger is connected. He has a team. He has it all. And if yesterday’s loss evenpoel was not older was because he had the tremendous luck that Juan Ayuso he had had to change the bike due to a breakdown and connected with him; an arrival that made him revive and partially save a crisis that could have been much greater.
It’s a shame that Henry Plus he ran out of energy two kilometers from the finish line, when he was perfectly positioned at the wheel of Roglic. He was only able to recover 20 seconds from Evenepoel. “It was such an impressive slump that I thought I wouldn’t make it to the finish line.” He came in the company of Carlos Rodriguez, which was magnificently regulated. It’s back. More wood!