Remco Evenepoel did not win his first individual time trial as newly-crowned world champion on stage 10 of the Vuelta a España.
However, the Belgian was nonetheless more than satisfied as he made time on all his GC rivals ahead of the race's return to the mountains.
Victorious in last year's equivalent second-week time trial in Alicante, where he put 48 seconds into Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma), this time the Soudal-QuickStep leader only gained 20 seconds on the three-time race winner, perhaps confirming the Slovenian is in much better condition at this point of the Vuelta compared to 2022.
Roglič's teammate, race leader Sepp Kuss, too, did a much better TT than expected and remains in the red jersey, albeit by a considerably reduced margin of 1:09
But with only Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) ahead of him – 16 seconds up – at the finish in Valladolid, Evenepoel will still go into the mountains ahead of the two Jumbo-Visma riders with the best GC track record – and he has also gained time on the rest of the GC rivals as well.
"I think [Jumbo-Visma] told [Kuss] to just go all out today to try and not lose too much time because I think they want to play the game with three leaders," Evenepoel said after the 25.8km ride.
"I think he did a very good job and like I said, a big chapeau to him because I was pretty surprised when I saw his times."
As for his own performance, he simply described it as "Good, eh?"
"I have almost half a minute on Roglič [27 seconds – Ed], over a minute [1:13] on Vingegaard. That is already a nice lead, but there is still a lot to come. It will be exciting," he said.
'We have to be happy with the GC gaps that I took today'
Roglič was the only one of the three GC challengers for Jumbo-Visma to outpower the Belgian at any point during the stage. He was a second up at the first checkpoint, 12.5km in after the technical, hillier earlier section of the stage, where Evenepoel was perhaps more pushed to exploit his full power.
But on the broad boulevards and tailwind-boosted run to the line that followed, Evenepoel then turned the tables on this rival. He moved to eight seconds ahead of Roglič at the second checkpoint after 19.5km, and then more than doubled that on the last part of the course.
"It's no lie that I would have liked to win today, but I have to live with this. Ganna was much stronger. If I want to lose to anyone, it's to him," Evenepoel said later.
"I think it's pretty good, knowing that I didn't have the best TT legs today. I had a difficult moment after 10 minutes, so I think that's the reason why I lost some time on Pippo [Ganna]. But I think if a guy deserves this stage win, it's him."
As for what that explanation could be, Evenepoel said that he was paying the price for racing hard for nine days, while Ganna, with no GC obligations, could "more or less spare himself."
That said, even if they had both been in identical circumstances in terms of the race to date, he still argued that Ganna would probably have won.
"But two times second place and already a stage win in the pocket is pretty nice for the first 10 days of this Vuelta," he said. "We have to be happy with the GC gaps that I took today and coming quite closer to Sepp who actually did a super good TT. Big congrats to him as well."
The mountains are coming back into view very quickly in this year's Vuelta, too, as the race takes La Laguna Negra de Vinuesa summit finish on Wednesday and then heads into the Pyrenees on Friday for stages to the Col du Tourmalet and then yet another summit finish at Larra-Belagua.
As Remco warned his rivals, "I have recently trained much more on the long climbs than on my time trial, and I felt like I was getting better every day last week. I now have to continue building the momentum from last weekend."
