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Can anything stop Jumbo-Visma from bending the Vuelta a España to its will and locking-out the final podium with Sepp Kuss, Primož Roglič, and Jonas Vingegaard?
A pack of Spanish chasers are thinking a classification conspiracy might be needed to pull the brakes on the Dutch team’s three-wagon freight train.
Watch out for fourth- through seventh-place Juan Ayuso, Enric Mas, Marc Soler, and Mikel Landa hatching a Spanish-accented plot as their home race tilts into its decisive final week.
“Ayuso is my rival but can also be my ally,” Mas told Spanish outlet AS after Saturday’s 14th stage. “Landa, Ayuso, Soler – maybe we have to collaborate and we can make a difference to change this race.”
Also read: Who can stop Jumbo-Visma after Pyrénéan romp?
Stages 13 and 14 saw Jumbo-Visma control the peloton like it was a Pyrénéan game of PlayStation.
Roglič and Kuss sat in the wheels and tormented Mas and Ayuso on the Tourmalet, and the team’s swarm of leaders and megadomestiques shut down every GC threat in the Spanish peaks the day after.
“This isn’t the war we expected, but everything happened so quickly. Our tactic of sending riders to the front didn’t go as we hoped,” Mas said after his team put Nelson Oliveira into the stage 14 break, perhaps in the hopes of some unlikely ambush.
Could there be a Spanish coup through the Vuelta’s final week?
Mas, Landa, Soler, and Ayuso ride for three different teams – Movistar, Bahrain-Victorious, and UAE Emirates.
Each of the three squads came to the race as plucky outsiders in what was touted a two-horse race between Jumbo-Visma and Remco Evenepoel.
Evenepoel is out of the GC picture and Jumbo-Visma is in a crushing level of control.
If they’re to see the final podium, Spain’s classification chasers need either a hasty collaboration during the race’s final seven stages, or an Evenepoel-size implosion from one of Jumbo-Visma’s trident.
“It’s impossible to surprise Jumbo-Visma. It was hard from start to finish, and it was very difficult to attack,” Landa told AS after his efforts were thwarted on stage 14.
“Jumbo-Visma has such a powerful team it’s discouraging. I hope the rest can focus, understand each other, and maybe force something this Vuelta.”
At this stage, an inter-team alliance seems unlikely to happen, and unlikely to work. With Kuss and Roglič on top form and Vingegaard only a half-watt behind, it’s hard to see a Landa-Mas-Soler-Ayuso powerplay proving successful.
Besides, any Movistar-UAE-Bahraini bonds would prove short-lived if a place on Madrid’s podium somehow becomes available.
Three summit finishes and a ridiculously complicated penultimate stage through the Sierra de Guadarrama will seal the Vuelta’s GC battle.
Home crowds will be hoping for an unlikely Spanish conspiracy on the roads toward Madrid.
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September 10, 2023 at 05:18PM
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How to stop Jumbo-Visma at the Vuelta a España? The Spanish chasers hope an alliance might do it - Outside Magazine
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