We’re more than halfway through the 2024 Vuelta a España now, but one of the few conclusions that can be drawn so far is - nobody on GC has yet been consistently good enough to stand head and shoulders above the rest.
With two scorching uphill stage wins and a current second place overall, not to mention his past Vuelta a España and Grand Tour history, Primoz Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) has done more than enough to remain the key GC reference point. And Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) certainly has a large but - to judge how rapidly he lost over 30 seconds on a short climb the other day - potentially brittle overall lead. However, as Roglič showed at Sierra Nevada and O’Connor at Cazorla and Padron, performance-wise in the Vuelta neither the Slovenian nor the Australian have shone equally brightly on successive days. Instead, for now, they’re only narrowly ahead as favourites: joint firsts, you could say, amongst equals.
