How does a rider lose a Vuelta a España lead to Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe)? Two ways, it seems. Gradually, then suddenly.
After diligently chipping away at his deficit to Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) for the past week, Roglič simply hacked off a huge chunk on the upper reaches of the Puerto de Ancares on stage 13.
O’Connor remains the leader of the bike race, but Roglič looks increasingly like the red jersey-elect after his remarkable exhibition here. Shearing the bones of nearly two minutes off O’Connor’s hefty lead was only part of the story on Friday. Roglič also put more than a minute into Enric Mas (Movistar) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), and just when each man might have been beginning to nurture hopes of winning this race himself. He also gained almost two minutes into Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates), surely ending the Briton’s hopes of a late resurgence.
This was a statement display from Roglič in every way. He is now just 1:21 behind O’Connor, while he is 1:40 ahead of Mas and 1:52 ahead of Carapaz, but the time gained was only a part of the story. The startling manner in which Roglič did it might well have a chilling effect on his rivals.
Roglič’s Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe squad haven’t always added up to the sum of their parts on this Vuelta, but they had too much for everybody else here, stringing out the red jersey group on the 15% slopes of the Ancares. Indeed, O’Connor was distanced even before Daniel Martínez had finished his shift on the front.
Inside the final 4km, Roglič took over, shooting clear with a rasping effort that only Mas and Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) could initially follow. And follow was all they could do. Unlike on the Puerto Cruxeiras on stage 11, when Roglič shared the pace-making with Mas, the Slovenian was happy to do it all on his own here, headwind be damned. Even for a rider of the quality of the defending champion Kuss, holding his old teammate’s wheel for a kilometre was almost like a victory.
“I knew Primož would go super hard,” said Kuss, now 15th overall at 7:28. “There was a bit of headwind, and I figured I would just try to hang on as long as I could but, yeah, I definitely exploded. I didn’t have anything to lose. Just for the confidence, it’s good to hang on for as long as I could.
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“The way Primož rode everyone off the wheel in a headwind like that, it’s really impressive, but this kind of climb and this kind of stage is right up his alley. He looked super strong. To ride Mas off the wheel like that and he just kept going at that speed. Super strong.”
While Kuss was already more or less out of the battle for the red jersey beforehand, the Puerto de Ancares was a rather more sobering kind of an afternoon for Mas. The Spaniard has finished second at this race on three occasions, but his performances over the past week – most notably in Granada on Sunday – had led to quiet belief that he might go a step further this year.
As if to illustrate the point, Mas’ Movistar squad led over the penultimate climb of the Puerto de Lumeras, but they were superseded by Red Bull on the stiffer slopes of the final ascent. And while Mas had the confidence to follow Roglič’s initial surge on the Ancares, he will quietly wonder if the upper reaches of the climb marked a reality check.
“I hope it was a bad day,” Mas said. “The feeling wasn’t good from the start of the climb. I felt empty and that’s why I couldn’t ride on the front with Primož. Up until today, I was feeling good. Maybe I overdid it following Roglič.”
O’Connor
Further down the mountain, O’Connor was cutting his cloth more cautiously. It might have been a simple off day, or it may be that the Australian is paying heavily for his efforts earlier in the race. Either way, O’Connor stuck to his preordained gameplan of riding to his own tempo and “getting from A to B as quickly as possible”.
The trouble, as O’Connor acknowledged afterwards, was that his own pace wasn’t enough to live in the same postcode as Roglič on a climb like the Ancares. Indeed, he was unable to follow his teammate Felix Gall, and it was probably instructive that the Austrian wasn’t ordered by his team to wait. Gall would finish the climb almost 50 seconds ahead of O’Connor.
“I was pretty cooked, I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry today,” O’Connor said at the summit. The red jersey remains on his back for now, but the fit is a whole lot looser. He will hope for – and need – far better on Cuitu Negru on Sunday.
And yet, while Roglič’s flex was the story of the day, some of the men who came in behind him were encouraged by their own displays. Carapaz, by his own admission, followed O’Connor’s tactic of leaving Roglič to his own device, and he declared himself satisfied at limiting his losses to a minute on the Ancares. At the very least, O’Connor’s travails will have heightened Carapaz’s belief that a podium finish is well within reach.
“We can see that O’Connor is suffering bit by bit,” Carapaz said. “And there’s a lot of Vuelta still to come.”
Those thoughts were echoed by Mikel Landa (T Rex-Quick-Step), who is quietly piecing together a fine Vuelta. The Basque fared better than anybody else against Roglič, limiting the damage to 35 seconds thanks in part to some help from teammate Kasper Asgreen, who had been in the early break.
In the overall standings, Landa is fifth at 3:20, and although he is now almost two minutes behind Roglič, the flames of landismo are never quite extinguished. Ancares, after all, was a climb perfectly tailored to Roglič’s gifts, but a variety of mountainous terrain lies ahead. In a race as unusual as this one, today’s certainties are never guaranteed to ring as true tomorrow.
“Roglič is definitely a bit stronger than us,” Landa said. “But there’s still a lot of Vuelta to go.”
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