Defending Vuelta a España champion Remco Evenepoel remained resolutely upbeat at the Alto de Javalambre summit finish on Thursday after veering perilously close to cracking on the ascent before rallying in the closing kilometres and limiting his losses.
Evenepoel ceded the Vuelta overall lead to Lenny Martínez (Groupama-FDJ) on stage 6, but the Belgian had already stated earlier this week he'd planned to do so, in a bid to save his teammates energy defending la roja in the coming stages through 'loaning' it to a non-GC threat.
What was not planned, however, was Evenepoel finding himself unable to follow Primoz Roglic when his Slovenian rival launched a searing attack some four kilometres from the line.
The Belgian dug deep, though, to complete the stage just 30 seconds down on Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard, and he remains very much in contention for the overall victory.
“When the others went, I just went at my own pace and in the end it was 30 seconds slower than the fastest guys,” Evenepoel told reporters as he donned a rain jacket and waited to make the long descent to the team buses at the foot of the remote climb in the sierras of Teruel.
“I didn’t feel like I was going really all out, it felt more a controlled pace, but I just could not go over that limit. You just have some days like that and today it was my turn to not have the best legs.”
While Evenepoel’s willingness to talk to the press was another sign of his upbeat attitude about his jour sans, Soudal-QuickStep’s challenging day at the Vuelta office had actually begun long before the stage rolled out of the small town of Vall d'Uxo around midday.
A virus has reportedly found its way into the team – “We’re wearing plastic gloves at breakfast,” Evenepoel stated later – and its effetcts caused Andrea Baglioli, already 15 minutes down on Wednesday, to abandon early on.
A frenetic early first two hours of racing culminated with a massive break going up the road, with Jumbo-Visma putting no less than four riders in the move including potential GC dangerman Sepp Kuss (Jumbo-Visma). Other dark horses like Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates), Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious) and Lenny Martínez were also in the break and a long, weary day of chasing the break then ensued for the Belgian squad.
On the plus side for Soudal-QuickStep, they had managed to put Louis Vervaeke and Mattea Cattaneo in the move, at least partly tempering their rivals' aggression, and Vervaeke, despite his illness, was then able to drop back and do some solid work for Evenepoel on the lower slopes of the final climb.
However, when Roglic then blasted away, Evenepoel appeared unable to respond, ending up alone on the Javalambre as Jonas Vingegaard and 2022 runner-up Enric Mas (Movistar) bridged across to the Slovenian.
But just when disaster seemed unavoidable for Evenepoel, he rallied sufficiently to fight back in the final part of the climb.
“I could actually speed up in the last two kilometres, so it was a bit strange. Let’s say it was a bad moment,” Evenepoel said.
“The race was really, really hard from gun on, I think I just needed to find my own rhythm, kind of settle myself a bit. The good thing was that I still had something left in the last 500 metres as well.
“Like I said, if this was a bad day, then it’s ok.”
Curiously enough, Evenepoel had, he said, felt worst when the bunch had one of its few periods of calm mid-way through the stage.
“I started to feel empty legs when the break was gone, and we had a bit of an easy moment, that’s when I starteed to feel had a bit more heavy legs. So let’s hope this was one of the worst days in these three weeks.”
Remco has limited his losses to the point where he still remains narrowly ahead of his rivals on the overall. Thanks to his win at Andorra and the strong team time trial in Barcelona, not to mention the six seconds he snatched in a bonus sprint on stage 5, the Belgian remains five seconds up on Vingegaard and 11 ahead of Roglic.
Remco also fared better than another top GC contender, Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers), already against the ropes at Arinsal, as the Welshman shed another 90 seconds to Roglic and Vingegaard on the Javalambre.
Thomas now looks to be all but out of the GC fight in the Vuelta, but Evenepoel remains in the game. However, in the Vuelta a España tests of climbing form are never slow in appearing and Saturday’s agonisingly steep ascent to Xorret to Cati and the draggy final rise to Calatrava on Sunday will see Evenepoel’s condition come under an unforgiving microscope, twice in the space of 24 hours.
