Two days after Adam Yates unleashed the talents of Tadej Pogacar in Sierra Nevada, winning with a 60-kilometre solo breakaway, the question is where does the Briton go from here in the battle for the overall victory at the Vuelta a Espana in Madrid on September 8th.
The UAE Team Emirates racer said on Sunday his main goal was to win Stage 9 in Granada, but the long journey has seen him open up a gap to the favourites for the GC to 3min 45sec. The Briton had a bad crash on Stage 6 and a tough day in the heat at Villuercas made the GC chances all but certain, but a superb climb in Sierra Nevada on Sunday turned the tide and Yates is storming back into the GC race.
It was a relatively quiet opening stage for the Vuelta a Espana general classification leaders on the second week, but Yates remains in 7th place, 5m 13s behind general classification leader Ben O’Connor (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale). Yates also leads the mountains classification, and is now level on 22 points with stage 10 winner Wout van Aert (Vismar-Lease a Bike).
UAE team manager Joccean Fernánes Matosin told Cyclingnews that O’Connor hadn’t had Yates on his “to follow” radar that day after being given a free pass on Stage 9 thanks to a significant time gap. Now that he’s back up the GC, Yates has much more limited room to pull away. But Matosin also noted that “there are some very tough days ahead of us in this Vuelta,” and it’s precisely on those stages that Yates has shown he shines best.
“He’s definitely up there,” Matosin said of Yates and the overall standings at the start of Stage 10. “He’s [triple Vuelta winner Primoz] Roglic effectively made up for what he lost in the heat and especially in the suffering of stage four in just one day. [6] He crashed hard and lost time, but is still five minutes behind Ben O’Connor.”
Matosin said the cooler weather in northern Spain, and possibly for the rest of the Vuelta, would be an advantage for Yates, who struggled in the heat, but he again pointed out that “it’s good weather for everybody, not just Adam.”
“I always look at the positive side of things. Adam lost some extra time after the Villalcas and crash, but he’s been able to move a little bit more from the long range and has a little more freedom to maneuver.”
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“He will now be more in control again but there are still many tough stages ahead.”
Either way, a key reference point for the Vuelta will be Primoz Roglic, whose inconsistent performances in the mountains thus far (including two summit wins but also a surprisingly flat performance in the Sierra Nevada that Roglic himself admitted to struggling with) have been central to how the race unfolds, but as Matosin points out, the difference in strength between Roglic and O’Connor on the climbs adds uncertainty and makes the race even more unpredictable.
“I don’t think Primo has good days and bad days. Rather, he is really good on short, explosive climbs, but when he is forced to go at a constant pace on long climbs he struggles a bit. This is the opposite of O’Connor, who is fine on long climbs but really struggles on short ones.”
There is currently talk of a power vacuum in the Vuelta but, as Matosin pointed out, the Slovenian’s position in cycling’s unofficial overall classification remains “fourth of the big four”, alongside Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates), Jonas Vingegaard (Visma Ris-a-Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep).
“What we’re facing now is a very open race with a lot of attacks and a lot of trying moves,” he agreed, “but we’ll also see what Roglič does from now on.”
As for the other Slovenian, who has already won two Grand Tours this season, Matosin confirmed that Pogacar will compete in both rounds of the Canadian WorldTour in September, as announced by Grand Prix organizers in Quebec and Montreal on Tuesday. He’ll then finish the season as already scheduled with the world championships and the Italian fall classics. But for now, and for the next two weeks, the cycling world’s attention is focused on what Adam Yates, Roglic and the other Vuelta a Espana overall favorites can achieve in Spain.
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