Of all the teams in the Giro d'Italia without a GC contender, it's a fair bet that the squad that followed Jonas Vingegaard's dramatic success on the Blockhaus the closest on Friday could well have been UAE Team Emirates-XRG.
Given the Dane's longstanding position as the top rival to Tadej Pogačar, UAE have both had a ringside view of Vingegaard's performances in the past and no small interest in seeing how the 29-year-old fared in his first-ever assault of a major climb in the Giro d'Italia as well.
Pogačar is not present in the Giro, of course, and indeed already won it with devastating ease in 2024, but he and his arch-rival are set to cross swords in the upcoming Tour de France which is both the Slovenian and the Dane's biggest stage-racing goal of the season.
Talking to Cyclingnews on Saturday morning, team manager Joxean Fernández Matxin emphasised that when he watched the Blockhaus stage, first and foremost he and the team were saddened by the absence of some of their star names due to the mass crash on stage 2.
"In many ways, we went through yesterday's [Friday's] stage feeling very sad, because I have no idea if we could have beaten Jonas, of course. But we could have been up there with Adam and Jay Vine.
"Jay was in great form, ready to fight for the time trial in Tuscany on Tuesday, and instead we just had to make do with what we had.
"Essentially and apart from how our own team performed, though, what we saw was more or less in line with what we expected."
"It was clear that Jonas didn't go any harder than he needed to, given what he's got coming up in the rest of the Giro and then on into the Tour. He was putting out the minimum effort necessary to make the maximum gains possible. It was brilliant."
'He took more time than I thought was actually possible'
As Matxin viewed it, Visma-Lease a Bike played things very cleverly strategically, with Vingegaard finishing it off faultlessly.
"He let his teammates do all the hard work much more than half-way up the climb, then he made his move. He rode it exactly as he wanted.
"If he goes on taking out 20 seconds on [rival Giulio] Pellizzari every day on a summit finish, it'll quickly add up.
"To be honest, on the Blockhaus he took more time than I thought was actually possible. A minute on a key opponent like Pellizzari? That's more than any of us expected."
"Ok, Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) held on better than we thought, but a minute on his most direct rival is far more time than normal in a first mountain stage and above all on a stage with just one climb at the end like on Friday."
Gall was perhaps the most surprising rider on the Blockhaus in some ways, holding Vingegaard to 13 seconds by the summit, but Matxin did not feel it was utterly unexpected by any means. That said, he also pointed to various dents in the Austrian's armour as perhaps limiting his GC options in some of the stages to come.
"He's always been very consistent, but in many cases, stages like today [stage 8 over the muri of Tirreno-Adriatico], if they go for it on GC, he isn't always that well-placed and he's not as good a bike handler as Vingegaard, [Giulio] Ciccone or Pellizzari. So on the more nervous stages, he pays for that" Matxin argued.
"But in tests of absolute climbing strength, a classic stage with a long, draining ascent of the kind we get in the UAE Tour, say, where there's a process of natural selection of the strongest, he's always on it. In those types of ascents, he's one of the five top best riders in the world."
When it comes to stage racing, though, Vingegaard can operate on another level regardless of the circumstances or the terrain. And on the Blockhaus, Matxin says, the ultra-versatile Dane was in his element once again.
"Jonas always knows when to wait for the right moment, he showed that yesterday. He went for it at five kilometres to open up a gap, he saw that Pellizzari was on his wheel, then kept going at his own pace, and Pellizzari blew.
"He races very intelligently, he knows how to use his energy perfectly. It was really brilliant."
Matxin has no time whatsoever, though, for the idea that even after such a commanding performance on the Blockhaus, Vingegaard has effectively won the Giro.
"We're not even at the first rest day," he points out. "On every corner, in every metre of the Giro you can lose this race."
"I'm not saying this because of what happened to my team on stage 2," where three UAE riders - Adam Yates, Marc Soler and Jay Vine - were all so badly injured they had to abandon either on the spot or a few hours later. "The truth is for everybody that even when you reach the final stage in Rome in the Giro d'Italia, you still can't relax."
'He's worked so hard to get so little reward'
It's logical, though, that even after an amazing series of triumphs for UAE Team Emirates-XRG in the Giro - three wins in eight days - Matxin's thoughts are as much, if not more, with the riders that have had to abandon as they are with those still on the race.
"Vine, in particular, needs us to show him how much we believe in him, because he took a big blow on the physical side, but even more on the mental side," Matxin said.
"He's ridden three races this year, in the first [in the Tour Down Under], a kangaroo fell on top of him and he had to abandon, then ten riders fell ahead of him in Catalunya and he crashed through no fault of his own again, and then in the Giro, one of our own riders came down and brought Jay down with him."
"He's worked so hard to get so little reward, after all that effort he'd put in, the sacrifices he'd made and his family too…we know he's crashed a lot in the past, but he's been really working on it, we've been working on his descending in training camps."
"But when people fall right in front of you, there's not much anybody can do. So we have to work hard with him, show our belief in him, because he was definitely a candidate for the time trial here and more."
Adam Yates, meanwhile, is still very angry at having had to abandon, Matxin said, because his latest climbing data suggested that he could have been up there in the GC fight on the Blockhaus.
There has been some encouraging news from the UAE sick bay though. Soler – who fractured his pelvis and needed a medicalised flight home from Sofia as he was immobilised after his accident – has started walking with crutches and unaided for the first time on Friday. The Catalan allrounder made it on foot as far as the local doctor's surgery for some blood tests, Matxin said.
On the plus side for the squad, UAE Team Emirates have done extraordinarily well in the Giro since then, winning multiple stages with Jhonatan Narvaéz and one with Igor Arrieta. But as Matxin says, that doesn't mean they forget the riders who through no fault of their own are no longer able to be present.
"It's a real pity, and we're giving them absolutely all the support we can," he said. "They don't deserve anything less."
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