The Vuelta a España resumed a much more familiar format on Friday as three-times overall winner Primoz Roglič finally reclaimed the red jersey of race leader thanks to a devastating display of climbing power by both the Slovenian veteran and his team.
For nearly a fortnight, la roja has eluded the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider after he and his team collectively dropped the ball by letting a GC contender as dangerous as Ben O'Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) gain a hefty five-minute overall advantage from a powerful first-week daylong break and stage win.
In his prolonged bid to put the record straight and regain command of the Vuelta, Roglic's usually consistent displays of climbing prowess have varied wildly, with devastating displays at Cazorla on stage 8 or Ancares on stage 14 followed by far more muted performances at Sierra Nevada and Cuitu Negru.
When O'Connor's lead was nonetheless reduced by Roglič to just five seconds on Lagos de Covadonga on stage 16, taking the red this weekend felt almost like a formality. But after Roglič and two teammates Aleksandr Vlasov and Dani Martinez managed to drop the entire field halfway up the Moncalvillo prior to the Slovenian blasting away alone, it was plain that he and his team wanted to make their rise to the top of the GC rankings feel like an assault which brooked no answer.
Come the summit and his 15th stage win, even Roglič's most tenacious rival Enric Mas (Movistar) throughout the Vuelta had shown clear signs of fading in his lone pursuit, crumbling to the point of letting David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) and Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) surge past in the finishing straight. O'Connor was long gone, meanwhile, losing 1:49 on the new race leader.
Perhaps as importantly as taking his 40th Vuelta race lead, the time gaps for Roglič on all his rivals now range from 1:54 on the Australian to 2:20 on Mas and 2:54 on Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easypost), sparking one post-stage question about whether his hold on the Vuelta lead was definitive.
"I hope so," he replied. "I mean, we have all worked super hard to achieve this for almost three weeks now. So it's a really great result and I have to enjoy it. But there are two big days still to come."
Roglič already knew how tough the relentlessly steep eight-kilometre ascent to Moncalvillo could be, of course, after he and Richard Carapaz fought each other almost to a standstill on the same climb in the 2020 Vuelta. Postponed to the autumn as a result of the pandemic and with virtually no fans on the roadsides, either, as the October shadows lengthened, four years ago Roglič finally shook off the South American to clinch a 13-second advantage and the stage win.
"I already had nice memories of it here, it was a great day, later in the season of course. But this time, too, I really, really enjoyed it," he said.
Unlike in 2020, though, when his Moncalvillo win came at the end of the first week, he and Carapaz remained engaged in close combat for red up until the last climb of the Vuelta a fortnight later. This time thanks to his far more dominating ride, Roglič has not only gained the lead, he's also taken a significant advantage overall. With just two days remaining in this year's Vuelta, in fact, he's now in a strong enough position to ride far more conservatively on GC than he did after the Moncalvillo back in 2020.
However, the Slovenian was cagy about his options, saying that for now, he would simply celebrate the stage "and then later on, we'll see what we do about tomorrow."
Even after such a dominating performance, some questions regarding Roglič's superiority still need to be resolved. Thanks to O'Connor's lengthy inter-regnum in red, Red Bull have managed to avoid having to defend the red jersey in a full-blown mountain stage. Tomorrow's ultra-difficult trek over the climbs of Burgos and Cantabria will put the German team to a serious test in that area, with the final summit finish of the race at Picón Blanco just one of several potential flashpoints.
Despite his latest victory, too, Roglič also confirmed that he is still suffering from his Tour de France crash and back injury. Finally, he pulled no punches about the difficulty of the last mountain stage in what has already been one of the toughest Grand Tours to date.
"Actually to be honest, I still feel the pain, above all on days like today when I made a big effort, I did notice it in the last kilometres," he said about his back. "And we did tomorrow's last climb last year in the Vuelta a Burgos, and in the Vuelta a España a few years back. It's going to be very hard, especially after three weeks.
"All the climbs will be hard, I think they'll feel twice as hard as they usually do after so much tough racing."
Yet for all those potential reservations about his pathway to a fourth victory, Roglič's latest high mountains performance at Moncalvillo has put him back in the driving seat at the Vuelta. The fight for red may not be done and dusted then, but with O'Connor put so convincingly to the sword and his other rivals reeling, too, on the latest Vuelta, climb, from now on it's definitely - and for a fourth time in six years - Roglic's race to lose.
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