The Vuelta a España ended with the anticipated winner, however the narrative of the race did not precisely run easily. After Tadej Pogačar’s exhibitions on the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, this was a really totally different type of Grand Tour, with ample tactical intrigue to match.
Several anticipated contenders fell by the wayside within the opening half of the race, however there was nonetheless no scarcity of riders taking part in main roles throughout this Vuelta. Ben O’Connor’s two-week stint within the pink jersey will linger lengthy within the reminiscence, as will Wout van Aert’s exceptional sequence of stage wins and jersey searching, which was cruelly reduce quick on the descent of the Collada Llomena.
Kaden Groves quietly underscored his standing with a hat-trick of dash wins, whereas Eddie Dunbar garlanded the race with two nice victories. Kern Pharma had been, by a distance, the largest shock of the race, whereas Mikel Landa’s peaks and troughs had been a key a part of the story.
The race finally belonged, in fact, to Primož Roglič, however his path to victory was not fully easy. We take a look at the defining moments of his record-equalling fourth Vuelta triumph.
Roglič proves he’s again within the sport
As the confetti from the victory celebrations settled on the Plaza de Cibeles final evening, a fourth record-equalling general win for Primož Roglič within the Vuelta a España might have felt like this 12 months’s race was enterprise as standard. But rewind 4 weeks and earlier than the Vuelta getting underway, his possibilities of a triumph seemed way more slender than the ultimate end result would recommend.
Roglič’s complete absence of racing, not to mention outcomes, since his crash and fractured again damage within the second week of the Tour had been hardly a supply of optimism about his possibilities. The workforce’s complete silence on his possibilities of collaborating additional amplified the uncertainty and hypothesis, and it was solely with lower than every week to go that the Slovenian’s provisional place on the beginning listing was confirmed.
By then, the sense that there was an influence vacuum to be crammed was nicely and really established and the absence of GC contenders of the calibre Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel on the Lisbon begin line prolonged it but additional. Then there was Roglič’s insistence on mentioning how his again nonetheless gave him grief in his pre-Vuelta press convention. Compared to the extraordinarily slim subject of standout candidates for the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, the 2024 Vuelta was by a long way trying set to be probably the most open Grand Tour in years.
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In the primary week of the Vuelta a España, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe continued to minimize Roglič’s possibilities, arguing that his spectacular stage 1 time trial, the place he completed forward of all his GC rivals, bore no relation to how he would possibly have the ability to combat within the mountains. “So I would not draw too many conclusions, saying – ‘Ah if he can go all out on the TT bike, it should be a bit of cake on the street bike, too,’ workforce supervisor Rolf Aldag advised Cyclingnews earlier than the stage.
However, all it took was three kilometres of powerful climbing on the finale of a blisteringly sizzling stage 4 to Pico Villuercas, the race’s first summit end, and all of the sudden Roglič was again as the person to beat within the Vuelta a España.
At the foot of the steepest a part of the climb, Lidl-Trek and T-Rex QuickStep managed the peloton just for Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates) to drive his approach clear. Yet the Frenchman’s efforts – as sadly so usually occurred on this Vuelta to the gutsy UAE rider – didn’t reap any rewards. Instead, his acceleration appeared to impress Roglič into motion, and he attacked with such energy {that a} subject that was already right down to a dozen, all of the sudden shrank to simply two riders on his wheel – Enric Mas (Movistar) and Lennert van Eetvelt (Lotto Dstny).
With the good thing about hindsight, there have been additionally hints that Roglič was not at his best possible or was not sure of his underlying power. Rather than up the tempo additional to drop his two most persistent rivals, the tempo allowed João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) and Matthew Riccitello (Israel-Premier Tech) to make it throughout to the tiny entrance group at lower than two kilometres to go. But when Mikel Landa (T Rex-QuickStep) introduced the group’s numbers as much as six and promptly attacked, Roglič proved there was some gasoline left within the tank with a speedy response, and he out-sprinted Lennert van Eetvelt (Lotto-Dstny) on the summit for the win.
In sneaking previous the Belgian after he celebrated too quickly, Roglič echoed how he claimed Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2020 towards Julian Alaphilippe. But the significance of his twentieth Grand Tour stage win paled in comparison with the GC message Roglič despatched.
His general benefit of eight seconds after stage 4 over Almeida was minimal, and his 32-second lead over third-placed Mas was barely any higher. But given the destruction he had dealt to the opposite GC contenders in a climb this quick – constructing his general benefit to 1:14 on Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike), 1:30 on Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers) and over two minutes on Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easy Post) – no one might doubt that Roglič was as soon as once more the person to beat.
For every other rider, it might have all however beggared perception that the efficiency got here six weeks after a crash within the Tour de France left him with a fractured vertebra. But Roglič has a tragic monitor report of rebounding from disappointing Tours de France within the Vuelta. Pico Villuercas once more confirmed the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider’s resilience.
Ben O’Connor erupts into the Vuelta’s GC race
“We’ll see on the finish of the race,” had been Primož Roglič’s solely phrases to the media when he was requested after stage 6 in regards to the GC earthquake that had simply ripped by way of the Vuelta a España. The triple Vuelta winner was being requested about the one query that mattered at that time – whether or not Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had made a mistake that day by letting solo breakaway rider Ben O’Connor acquire over six minutes on the primary peloton and transfer into the pink jersey by an virtually equally large margin.
But even when the Slovenian wasn’t in any respect completely satisfied to debate the brand new race situation with the media, the shockwaves of what O’Connor, beforehand two minutes down and twenty third general, had achieved on a seemingly inoffensive-looking transition stage resounded by way of the remainder of the Vuelta. And they got here far nearer to sinking Roglič’s possibilities of a fourth general win than he or his workforce would have appreciated.
Before O’Connor’s transfer, the almost definitely cause stage 6 appeared set to earn landmark standing within the 2024 Vuelta had been the weird setting for the stage depart, with riders lining up within the inside of a huge Carrefour grocery store. After weaving their well beyond procuring trolleys and checkout desks, the primary main step in direction of stage 6 gaining significantly extra significance than predicted got here when O’Connor snuck right into a breakaway of 30 riders early on.
Riding by way of rolling however on no account overly powerful terrain, with 27 kilometres to go and the time hole ticking steadily upwards, O’Connor left the final of his breakaway companions and commenced his solo run in direction of victory. It’s a given in biking technique that every one the GC groups ought to have already united to forestall a brand new joint enemy just like the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale chief from rising.
But Red Bull had already solely made a half-hearted try and cease the Australian and by then, the horse had already bolted, so it was barely a shock that there was just about no collaboration behind. Movistar, Visma-Lease a Bike, Ineos and UAE had been basically telling Red Bull that O’Connor’s upsetting the established GC order was a multitude of their very own making, and it was as much as them to scrub it up.
“Things did not play out as we wished,” sports activities director Patxi Vila advised Spanish tv.
“The begin was actually fast-moving and the break of the day [containing O’Connor, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s Lipowitz and 28 others) was a really strong one. Lipo’ was in there, and we thought he would have no problem staying with Ben and we’d get another option on GC,” Vila said. Instead, he confirmed with considerable understatement, “Things got out of hand.”
Bizarrely enough, this wasn’t the first time a seemingly inoffensive breakaway through this part of Spain ended by turning the Vuelta upside down. An almost identical scenario arose in the 1990 race that finished in Ubrique, another small Andalusian hilltown just a few dozen kilometres away from Yunquera. Despite having a string of top ten GC places in the Giro d’Italia in the second half of the 1980s, when Italian Marco Giovannetti infiltrated his way into a transition break on stage 5, nobody seemed overly bothered given Banesto, the dominating Spanish team of the era, had their one of their ‘super-domestiques’, Julian Gorospe, in the same move.
But then Gorospe cracked a few days later and ceded the red jersey to Giovanetti and – given the scale of his lead – for all the predictions the Italian would crack, no matter how much time Giovanetti lost on each mountain stage to Banesto’s GC counterattackers, Giovanetti still had enough to claim the only Grand Tour victory of his career.
Even if Red Bull’s directors had not brushed up on their Vuelta history beforehand, there was a far more recent example for them to understand why it was so risky to let a rider with fourth places on GC in the Tour and Giro gain such a massive advantage.
In the 2023 Vuelta, Sepp Kuss – normally not an overall threat with teammates Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard as leaders – formed part of a midweek breakaway en route to a summit finish and used that as a foundation to gain the overall victory. Given those events were so fresh in the collective Vuelta a España memory, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe relying on Lipowitz, riding his second Grand Tour after abandoning the Giro in May, to handle O’Connor or to spark the other teams into action, seemed like a high-risk strategy. Sure enough, with Roglič now forced to fight to overhaul O’Connor’s 4:51 advantage, the top pre-race favourite found himself in serious trouble – particularly as the concerns about his back injury still lingered.
“Before the Vuelta, I had said to the team management: ‘It will have to be done in seconds, not minutes’,” Roglič’s trainer Marc Lamberts told Het Laatste Nieuws on Monday about how he and the Slovenian had originally aimed at winning.
“Primož is not Tadej Pogačar or Jonas Vingegaard, who can gain two minutes on a long climb… And what happened then? They gave Ben O’Connor more than six minutes as a gift. That was a deficit that Primož had to make up somehow.
“I was very unhappy with that situation, knowing what Primož’s great strength is when he can race defensively and follow the wheel of someone like [Enric] Mas till the final 5 hundred metres after which shoot away. Now, all of the sudden, Primož needed to assault.”
Ben O’Connor holds agency at Sierra Nevada
For Vuelta a España race chief Ben O’Connor, it appeared, by the epic trek by way of the foothills of Sierra Nevada on stage 9, the writing was nicely and really on the wall. When the Australian and the peloton set out on what was by far the hardest stage of the primary week in blazing southern Spanish warmth, the Australian had already been in deep trouble – and it appeared as if extra was to return.
At Cordoba on stage 7, Primož Roglič started his mission to reconquer the pink jersey by snatching again six seconds’ price of time bonuses excessive of a late climb. Even if that minor skirmish barely dented the Australian’s general benefit of practically 5 minutes, at Cazorla’s steep uphill end the subsequent day, a way more severe assault by Roglič prompted way more injury to O’Connor than he had anticipated. Suddenly one other 56 seconds had been sliced off his GC grip.
After such a stinging defeat on a comparatively minor climb in Cazorla, O’Connor’s possibilities of remaining in pink when the peloton crossed the sun-cracked ramps of 15 to twenty% on three class 1 climbs within the Sierra Nevada on stage 9 had been broadly predicted to be minimal. Midway by way of the stage, Spanish tv commentators confirmed how low they rated the Australian’s possibilities that they had been already starting to make use of main favorite Roglič’s place general because the reference level for all the opposite GC riders, ignoring O’Connor’s place in pink.
However, it turned out that O’Connor put up a fierce resistance and it was Roglič who got here away from Sierra Nevada with extra questions than solutions. Furthermore, O’Connor even managed to barely develop his lead by 4 seconds, by ending third in Granada.
“I feel we had been actually composed,” O’Connor mentioned afterwards. “It reveals that we’re right here to nonetheless combat. Every second counts.”
Just as a result of O’Connor got here by way of the day’s racing unscathed didn’t imply there have been no assaults or motion on the GC entrance. The first large change had come even earlier than the day’s motion had begun as one among UAE’s foremost GC challengers, João Almeida, needed to pull out with COVID-19. Then on a stage with greater than 4,000 metres of climbing, UAE Team Emirates launched a robust three-man early assault with Marc Soler, Jay Vine and Adam Yates, which culminated with Yates charging away 60 kilometres from the road to say a solo victory and transfer to inside two minutes of Roglič on GC. Equally impressively, former Vuelta podium finisher Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) blasted away from even additional out and accomplished a 90-kilometre transfer in second place behind Yates to maneuver as much as fourth.
Last however not least, Enric Mas (Movistar) managed to realize the beforehand inconceivable: For the primary time in his profession, he dropped a bunch containing Primož Roglič within the mountains to achieve a minute’s benefit. Had Mas not practically crashed on the quick descent to the end in Granada when a crosswind prompted his bike to swerve, his assault may need pushed the Spaniard into a good stronger general place than fourth behind O’Connor.
One of the few main GC contenders who didn’t assault even as soon as was Primož Roglič. Contrary to all expectations after he wreaked havoc on his rivals on two earlier summit finishes at stage 4 and stage 8, to not point out having his workforce put in some strong work on the strategy roads to the second decisive ascent of Hazallanas, Roglič failed to maneuver.
Instead, the Slovenian stayed on the wheels all the best way up the infamous troublesome Sierra Nevada ascent – one he knew nicely from a number of altitude coaching camps. He didn’t budge when Mas, already proven to be a harmful rival at Villuercas and Cazorla, charged away. Roglič’s biggest achievement on stage 9 was not dropping extra time than 4 seconds to O’Connor quite than making a race-winning transfer.
As a end result, the Vuelta headed for its lengthy switch north with an unstable GC stalemate even when Roglič remained the reference level. However, after Sierra Nevada, the clouds of uncertainty surrounding Roglič’s capability to supply sustained efforts on main mountain phases and take the race by the scruff of its neck had not disappeared. Meanwhile, O’Connor was nonetheless very a lot accountable for the race, and nothing, it appeared, could possibly be fully dominated out – not even O’Connor successful.
Curious Asturias as Roglič cannot hammer house Ancares message
When the Vuelta reached the Puerto de Ancares on stage 13, the race lastly seemed set to observe its preordained script. Having already chipped handfuls of seconds off O’Connor’s lead throughout the race’s sojourn in Galicia, Roglič proceeded to place two minutes into the pink jersey on the wickedly steep slopes of the Ancares.
Just as importantly, he burnt Enric Mas off his wheel, gaining a minute on the Mallorcan within the course of. Although O’Connor nonetheless held the jersey, Roglič seemed more and more just like the presumptive Vuelta winner. As the race headed into ever extra mountainous terrain, the route of journey appeared apparent.
Curious issues are likely to occur, nonetheless, every time the Vuelta reaches the misty, inexperienced mountains of Asturias. The summit finishes at Cuitu Negru on stage 15 and Lagos de Covadonga on stage 16 appeared apparent locations for Roglič to hammer house his authority and wrest the maillot rojo from O’Connor, however the Vuelta is never that easy in these components.
Amid the fog that enveloped the higher reaches of Cuitu Negru, Roglič seemed to copy his Ancares exhibition, however he discovered his rivals more durable to shake. Mas held his wheel and later even briefly distanced Roglič, whereas O’Connor restricted the injury nicely. At the summit, Roglič was in such a state of confusion that he even appeared underneath the impression that O’Connor had gained time on him.
Later that night, O’Connor would make a acquire, at the least in a way of talking, as Roglič was docked 20 seconds by the commissaires for drafting behind a workforce automobile after a motorbike change. The Australian entered the remainder day together with his lead nonetheless over a minute, although Roglič was broadly anticipated to make up that floor when the race resumed at Lagos de Covadonga.
A wet day in Asturias solid doubt on the earlier certainties of the Vuelta, and never for the primary time. Roglič’s anticipated assault by no means got here. He selected – or was he compelled? – to race conservatively, and he even betrayed a fleeting signal of issue in monitoring Mas’ acceleration. Behind, O’Connor did sufficient to save lots of his pink jersey by 5 seconds. Although Roglič was nonetheless inching in the suitable route, his path to general victory was proving extra sophisticated than anticipated.
Roglič endures amid Red Bull’s reveals of power and weak point
All by way of the Vuelta, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe directeur sportif Patxi Vila had spoken of the necessity for his workforce to be as contemporary as attainable for the Vuelta’s demanding closing acts within the Rioja and Burgos. And although Roglič had been the reference level for everyone within the race since stage 4, Red Bull had largely managed to keep away from having to manage the peloton, with Decathlon-AG2R, Movistar and even Soudal-QuickStep extra usually taking on the reins on key days.
Red Bull’s flexes had been restricted to set-piece events just like the Ancares on stage 13 and, above all, the Alto de Moncalvillo on stage 19, the place Roglič’s workforce shredded the pink jersey group from the very backside of the climb. With 6km to go, three Red Bull riders – Daniel Martinez, Aleksandr Vlasov and Roglič – merely ripped away from the remainder.
That dramatic lead-out teed up Roglič’s most hanging solo exhibition since his win at Lagos de Covadonga three years in the past. His stage victory introduced him the pink jersey with a lead of 1:54 over O’Connor, whereas Mas basically conceded defeat on the summit. Red Bull’s collective would possibly, in the meantime, meant that the defence of the maillot rojo on stage 20 appeared a formality, regardless of virtually 5,000m of climbing.
The Vuelta hadn’t fairly performed Vuelta-ing. When Vlasov and Martinez had been inexplicably dropped early on stage 20, it was clear that one thing was amiss. Martinez and Patrick Gamper would quickly abandon, whereas a struggling Nico Denz completed simply exterior the time restrict. Even earlier than the stage completed, phrase started to filter by way of of a wave of sickness throughout the workforce, however Roglič held agency on the street to Picón Blanco.
It helped that Roglič nonetheless had teammates Roger Adria and Florian Lipowitz for firm, and questions could possibly be requested, too, in regards to the relative passivity of Mas and Carapaz. But above all, it was Roglič’s poise that stood out. On the ultimate climb to Picón Blanco, Roglič even supplied one thing of a throwback to the times of Miguel Induráin when he opted to manage the pink jersey group by driving on the entrance himself.
Whether it was a bluff or a present of power, the top end result was the identical. Mas hesitated till the higher portion of the climb, by which level it was lengthy since clear that stage victory and second general had been the summit of his ambitions at this race.
The following night, when Roglič positioned second within the Madrid time trial to seal a record-equalling fourth victory, he revealed that he, too, had come down with the identical sickness as his teammates on the ultimate day. “But ultimately, I used to be approach too far, I needed to end it off,” Roglič shrugged.
In a Vuelta of untamed fluctuations, probably the most constant rider by far had stayed the course higher than anyone else. O’Connor, the runner-up, summed up Roglič’s successful philosophy higher than anybody. “He’s very nicely conscious of what his strengths are,” O’Connor mentioned. “He makes it depend on the times when he was at his strongest. And I feel he does a very good job of limiting the times the place it is not precisely in his ballpark.”