The Vuelta a España is chaos, and proof you shouldn’t try to be too clever in cycling

Adam Becket

News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com - should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.

Primož Roglič might still win the Vuelta a España. The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider is very much still in the picture, and the best placed rider to step into the race lead should Ben O’Connor of Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale fall off. This may be true, but Roglič has made his life harder than necessary, and there are just 12 stages left.

After stage four of this year’s race, the Slovenian was in control. A stage win saw him grab hold of the Grand Tour, a race he has won three times before. At that point, it felt like it could be game over already. Sure, there were basically two weeks of racing to go, but once Roglič takes the lead in the Vuelta, he wins it, right? Well, no.

Two days later, Red Bull decided the best thing for the team, and for Roglič, was to lose the red jersey, so they could claim it back later in the race. It would mean less faff after every stage, less time on the podium, less obligation to the media, and also less work in the race. Put like that, the logic seems to make sense.

What doesn’t make sense is gifting the race lead - in this theory, lending it - to someone who is an overall threat, which is what happened as Ben O'Connor claimed over six minutes back on stage six. Sure, O’Connor is yet to finish on a Grand Tour podium and went into stage six in 23rd place overall, but he is also a proven GC rider. This isn’t lending it to Rein Taaramaë or Odd Christian Eiking, as happened in 2021, when Roglič gave up the lead twice but still came back to win.

The whole thing is a gamble, but it seems like an unnecessary gamble, one which might ruin the whole race for Red Bull and Roglič. If it was someone who was less of a threat, perhaps there wouldn’t be as much criticism of the German team’s tactics, but that is not where we are. Where we are now is considering why it would ever be wise to give up the lead in a race, in the process assuming you will be able to get it back at some point. Assuming, of course, is the downfall of many.

“Things didn’t play out as we wanted,” Red Bull sports director Patxi Vila told Cyclingnews, in the understatement of the season. “The start was really fast-moving and the break of the day was a really strong one. Lipo [Florian Lipowitz of Red Bull] was in there, and we thought he would have no problem staying with Ben and we’d get another option on GC.”

O’Connor ended up taking 6:31 on Roglič, a situation which could have been avoided, but also was a great ride from the Australian. That should not be missed in all this. It’s one thing to see an opportunity, but another to grasp it with both hands.

This Vuelta has been chaos. The Vuelta is often chaotic, with riders at differing levels of form and fatigue coming into it - some rode the Tour de France, others are at their first Grand Tour of the season - and with odd team lineups. The amount of climbing in this year’s race has meant team’s going climber-heavy in their squads, but also teams just don’t have the power to control a race. It means things like O’Connor’s long-range move, but also others repeating the feat, as Adam Yates of UAE Team Emirates did on Sunday. If a rider is strong enough, they really can ride away, something we don’t often see from someone not called Tadej Pogačar.

Yates moved up 20 places in a single stage, aping O’Connor’s climb up the leaderboard a few days previously, proving the race is not dead yet. However, O’Connor is still hanging on, so there is no guarantee anyone will fade. It is entertaining, something the Vuelta needs to be to attract attention at this point in the season. It’s entertaining, but incredibly hard to predict - which makes Roglič’s decision to give up red all the more interesting. If I can’t predict it, Red Bull definitely can’t either. Maybe O’Connor will win. Maybe it will be Roglič, maybe Yates. Or it could be someone I haven’t even named here. It’s all to play for, and it’s fun.

This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.