On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 10/1/2022
The Reign in Spain is Over
Primoz Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) did not win his fourth Vuelta a España in a row but not for want of trying. Instead, the new king of the Vuelta is 22-year old Belgian Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step). As the Vuelta finished back on September 11, this won’t be news to any race fans who’ve been paying attention. So this won’t be a conventional sports report on the three-week grand tour; rather a more relaxed review of how the fast boys got from the start in Utrecht to the finish in Madrid.
I always say I never make public predictions because I so often end up wrong in my own private guesses about who’s going to do what. But I came close in my May look at the season up to that point. Two items…
“Primoz Roglič did just enough to win Paris-Nice but did not exactly look like a colossus. And then he had his little meltdown at the Basque Country. So while we have to figure he’ll be a contender in mid-summer, I wouldn’t rate him a mortal lock to win anything.”
“Remco Evenepoel is looking strong…just bursting with youthful energy…but like Wout van Aert, he doesn’t quite have the climbing chops to win a Grand Tour. He’ll be a holy terror in the classics and maybe some shorter stage races but will be only hoping for stage wins in the bigger events.”
Hmmm…I was about half right. Maybe even marginally more than half, if I may be allowed to spin-doctor my observations.
I said in that piece that no excuse was offered for the Roglič meltdown at the Basque Country (where he couldn’t keep up with the fastest climbers when it mattered). But subsequent reports indicate he had a knee injury, something he incurred prior to that race. Whether it was due to an accident or to chronic issues I have not been able to ascertain. In any event, he seemed to be past the problem when he won the overall at the Dauphiné, just before the Tour de France.
Then he crashed at the Tour, lost time and was beat up. He hung around long enough to help his teammate Jonas Vingegaard take a commanding lead, then dropped out to heal up and rest up for the Vuelta, where he was the three-time defending champion. He did not win his fourth Vuelta. He didn’t even finish it.
Evenepoel won the Vuelta and quite impressively. However, he did appear just a teeny bit vulnerable in the biggest mountains. Not every day…just every so often. He did much better than I expected him to do but my personal jury is still out: can he win against stronger competition, such as what he’ll face at next year’s Tour? Even at this Vuelta, with a couple of little things playing out differently, he might not have pulled it off.
So let’s go back and see where this race was won and where it was lost. First of all, I am going to state that the race was really between Evenepoel and Roglič; that no one else was really in the hunt, not seriously. Enric Mas (Movistar) had a fine ride to finish second at 2:02 but I never thought he was going to challenge the two big guns…did you? Juan Ayuso (UAE), at the ripe old age of 19, finished an amazing third but almost five minutes back.
Chris Horner, in his preview of the Vuelta, at least agreed with me in this. He said Roglič and Evenepoel were the only riders who could win the GC, barring some major weirdness. However, he went out on a limb and stated quite confidently that Remco could “demolish” the Vuelta field. He noted the reasons why others were doubting the young Belgian (which were my reasons exactly): that he couldn’t hang with Tadej Pogačar on the biggest climb at Tirreno-Adriatico; that he couldn’t hang with Aleksandr Vlasov on the biggest climb at Valenciana; that he couldn’t hang with Dani Martinez on the biggest climb at the Basque Country. I had plenty of company among the self-appointed smart guys as to his inability to hang in the big mountains. But hat’s off to Horner: he called it and got it right. His contention is that Evenepoel, at just 22, is still rounding into form, still figuring out how good he can be and how to be that good.
And for what it’s worth (not much) my comparison of Evenepoel to Wout Van Aert is a bit feeble. Wout Van Aert is 6’3” and 172 lbs; Evenepoel is 5’7” and 134 lbs. An extra 40 lbs doesn’t make this an apples-to-apples comparison.
So anyway…
Roglič and Jumbo-Visma got off to a good start, winning the Stage 1 team time trial, notably :14 ahead of Evenepoel and Quick-Step. Things stayed that way until Stage 4. This looked like a stage for a sprint finish, although there were more than a few hills along the way—enough to weed out the bigger, heavier sprinters—and then the final half-mile was uphill at over 8%. So it was actually more of an opportunity for a puncheur, someone who can combine climbing and sprinting. We’ve seen Roglič fill that bill in other races in recent years and he did it on this stage, to perfection. While Evenepoel was chillin’ in the main pack, not staying alert for surprises, Roglič was edging up to the front at 700 meters. He bided his time until under 200 meters and then attacked and made a clean getaway ahead of the fastest riders still there after the little 8% wall. He won, got the bonus seconds and a little more for gapping the group. It was classic, opportunistic racing, something we would have seen from a Merckx or an Hinault, back in the day. And when the dust had settled, Roglič had fattened his lead over Evenepoel from :14 to :27. And he put on the GC leader’s jersey…the maillot rojo.
But that was something of a high-water mark for Roglič. He held his lead on Stage 5 but lost it on Stage 6, a day of miserable rain and pea soup fog, with a mountaintop finish to Pico Jano…a little under 7% for a little under 8 miles. That’s a not-too-hard climb that might favor Evenepoel and so it proved out. Behind a break, he got off the front of the GC group with just Enric Mas for company. Juan Ayuso also got off the front of that bunch but never made it across to the other two. Meanwhile, Roglič was leading the remaining GC group of about 20. No one helped him. He pulled the whole final climb with everyone else sitting on his wheel. At the end, behind a nice win for Jay Vine, Evenepoel was 2nd, having gapped Mas in the last few meters. Ayuso was 4th and Roglič was 5th, 1:22 behind Evenepoel. Add in the :6 bonus for finishing 2nd and Evenepoel goes from :27 behind Roglič to 1:01 ahead.
All the major players finished together on Stages 7 and 8 but things got exciting on Stage 9, which offered up five categorized climbs, including the final one to Alto Les Praeres: less than three miles but an average grade of 13%, with much of the last three kilometers at over 15% and some of it between 20% and 24%. At least the weather was nice! This is the sort of terrain where the Remco-doubters figured he’d crack. In fact, he dominated…demolished his rivals, to use Horner’s word. Behind another breakaway—a great win for Louis Meintjes—Evenepoel, Mas, Ayuso, and Roglič were together just below the 3-K banner. Roglič was the first to falter. You could see he was struggling…in and out of the saddle, rocking around like a dinky-bird. Then Mas and Ayuso had to let go as well. Evenepoel never let up and, really, he never looked like he was working all that hard. I mean, he had to be, right? But throughout that section, with pitches up above 20%, he never once got out of the saddle. He just sat there, grinding out a brutal, machine-like tempo. For the many wise guys who figured he couldn’t do that, it was a shock. It was very impressive.
By the time the dust had settled—and this time I mean that literally: the final kilometer was hard-packed dirt—his lead was 1:12 over Mas and 1:53 over Roglič. Another fresh young rider, 21-year old Carlos Rodriguez (INEOS), was 4th and Ayuso was 5th, all still within two and a half minutes.
It only got better for Evenepoel. After the rest day they had the only full time trial. He won it…demolished it. Roglič was 2nd but a whopping :48 behind. (Remember that Roglič is the current Olympic champion in the ITT.) The only other GC player even close was Rodriguez at 1:22. Mas and Ayuso both did anemic time trials. Now the GC standings had Evenepoel 2:41 ahead of Roglič and 3:03 ahead of Mas. That Evenepoel would do well in a time trial was no surprise. He’s done that before. At this point he was showing no weakness.
There was plenty of head-scratching from the troops as to why Roglič wasn’t quite up to his normal, dominant standards. Were his injuries from the Tour still bothering him? Was the knee problem from the Basque Country still an issue? He lost two teammates—Sepp Kuss was a DNS on Stage 9 and Eduardo Affini was a DNS on Stage 10—leading some to speculate there was a bug making its way through the team. Many questions were asked and perhaps they were answered somewhere, but I never saw any definitive conclusions. He was obviously in pretty good shape to be 2nd overall and 2nd in the ITT. But just…just not quite there.
Game over? Probably, but not quite…
It was mostly status quo for a few stages. Evenepoel, Mas, Roglič, and Ayuso finished together on another big mountaintop climb on Stage 12. But things got more intriguing on the next mountain finish, Stage 14 (last climb to Sierra de la Pandera: 5 miles at about 8% but with many of the later pitches much steeper). Just around 4 K to the finish on a 15% grade—again, behind a break—Roglič attacked the 10-rider GC group and initially dropped everyone. Most crucially, Evenepoel could not respond. Next, Mas jumped off the front and chased after Roglič. Eventually, most of the riders in that group dropped Evenepoel. As the TV announcer said: “He’s human after all!” Roglič took almost a minute out of Evenepoel over those 4 K, trimming his lead down to 1:49.
More of the same the next day on the massive Sierra Nevada mountain finish (14 miles at about 7%). As long as the climb was, the grade wasn’t steep enough to really make a difference. Within the last kilometer, Roglič dropped Evenepoel and eventually chipped another :15 off the lead, ending up in 2nd at 1:34. Clearly, Roglič had good legs at this point and Evenepoel was looking a bit vulnerable…which only begs the question: what was going on with Roglič back on Stages 6 and 9, where he lost a collective 2:20 to Evenepoel?
Time was running out for Roglič. There were two more mountain finishes—Stages 18 and 20—but neither looked all that difficult and therefore not likely to be all that decisive. But Roglič wasn’t giving up and that brings us to Stage 16, where something very weird happened. Or two weirdnesses, back-to-back. The stage was in many respects similar to Stage 4, where Roglič pulled off his little sneak attack. There was a nasty little uncategorized climb about 10 K out that would weed out most of the hunkier sprinters. Then there was a little wall—a third of a mile at over 8%—before a last roll-out to the finish. Just as he had done on Stage 4, Roglič attacked on that little wall, with 2.7 K to the line. He got his gap but four other riders—all good sprinters but also decent climbers—eventually chased him down, the five of them well clear of the main pack.
Roglič kept the hammer down until the last corner before the finish. Then he pulled wide and let the sprinters pull through. Some analysts say his speed took him wide but my sense of it is he knew he could not beat the best of these sprinters and only intended to finish with them and get the same time they would get. Either way, they pulled through and he tucked back in at the back of the group. His gambit had paid off, with Evenepoel lolligagging around, way back in the pack, not paying attention to any sneaky moves. That’s where we get our two weird moments…
First off, about 40 seconds after Roglič attacked, Evenepoel, who had, as I say, been drifting toward the back of the main group since about 5 K to go, threw up his arm to signal to his team car that he’d had a flat. This is within the final 3 K. Bear in mind that if you have a mechanical or a crash within those final 3 K you get the same time as the main finishing group. However, if you are just dawdling along (a relative term in a field sprint), just trying to roll it home and stay out of trouble, and if you fall outside the main group, you won’t get the same time as the main bunch. You get your real time, whatever it is when you cross the line.
By signaling to his team car that he’d had a flat, Evenepoel insured that he would get the same time as the main bunch, which it turns out was 8 seconds behind Roglič and his four off-the-front guys. I’ve watched the video of him calling for a new bike several times and it sure doesn’t look like he’s got a flat. But I confess it’s hard to tell. The video is brief and grainy and riders and cars are sometimes blocking the view. I’m not the only one who red-flagged this though. Many others thought it looked a bit fishy…suspiciously convenient. He eventually rolled across the line 3:08 behind the leaders. No one is suggesting he would have lost three minutes had he been hammering to catch up to Roglič and his other escapados. But he almost certainly would have lost much more than the 8 seconds he was eventually given. Minus the 8 seconds, his lead was trimmed to 1:26. Without the call for a new bike, who knows? Under a minute?
But then we get the other weirdness and that one renders the possibly phantom flat tire moot. Back to the front: we watch from the finish line camera as the five off-the-front guys line up their sprint. Roglič has pulled wide and has now drifted in at the back of the group…and then suddenly, we see him on the ground, spinning in circles at 40 mph. What the hell? You could not tell exactly what happened because he and the rider he collided with—Fred Wright—were hidden behind the other three sprinters and the helicopter shot missed them. But I found a series of stop-action photos taken from the side of the finish straight that show pretty conclusively that Roglič slammed into Wright. He didn’t mean to. He was just going too fast and lost it. Others have suggested Wright was at fault but that’s not how I see it.
Eventually he got up and staggered across the finish line. Although many riders passed him while he was getting himself back on his bike, he was awarded the same time as the four others in the sprint: 0:00, or :08 ahead of the pack, including Evenepoel. That was the right call.
But the crash was bad. Although he had no broken bones, he was badly hammered. It was the end of his Vuelta. He could not start the following day. I feel so sorry for Roglič. He’s such a classy guy and such a brilliant cyclist. But lately it seems he almost embodies that old blues song: “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all!” As a personal aside, I have more than the usual sympathy for him in this case. A couple of days before his crash, I went more-or-less head-on into a truck and got pretty well smashed up. When I saw him sitting on the ground at the finish, with blood all over and with that vacant, in-shock look on his face, I had a pretty good idea how he was feeling…except for the bit about knowing his Vuelta has just gone up in smoke.
We’ll never know if Roglič could have made any more inroads into Evenepoel’s lead. My guess is probably not or at least not enough. We do know the standings remained essentially the same over the final five stages. With Roglič gone, Mas moved up to 2nd and Ayuso to 3rd.
In spite of losing a little time on Stages 12 and 13, and in spite of the faintly fishy smell from that flat tire on Stage 16, it was a hugely impressive win for Remco Evenepoel. His attack on the absurdly steep finish of Stage 9 was the stuff of instant legends. His arrival on the scene changes the calculus for next year and for many years to come.
And then, just two weeks later, he capped off his dream season by winning the UCI World Championship. Wow! And it wasn’t even close. He rode off the front of the main pack with 35 K to go, dropped his last pursuers with 25 K to go, and soloed in from there, 2:21 ahead of 2nd place. About three years ago, my Belgian friend Marc told me to keep an eye on this kid; that he was going to do big things. Good advice!
So…three grand tours this year and three new winners…Jai Hindley at the Giro, Jonas Vingegaard at the Tour, and now Remco the pocket-rocket at the Vuelta. That’s an exciting development but it doesn’t mean the big dawgs from recent years are going away. (Well, actually some are: they had a nice tribute on the final day of the Vuelta for two old warriors who are retiring this season: Alejandro Valverde and Vincenzo Nibali.) But Tadej Pogačar and Primoz Roglič are still alive and kicking. On the same day the Vuelta ended, Pogačar won the Grande Prix de Montreal, beating none other than Wout Van Aert in the final sprint. Just for one little reminder of that.
We still have a few more fun races this season—II Lombardia, Paris-Tours, Giro dell’Emilia—and then we have to wait, none-too-patiently, for the 2023 season to see how things unfold.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net