Winds touching 80kph and incessant torrential rain on the final day of O Gran Camiño could not stop Jonas Vingegaard’s relentless runs of triumphs in his first race of the 2024 season, as the Dane made light of yet more atrocious weather conditions to claim a third solo stage victory and seal the overall win for a second straight year.
Watched by a crowd of umbrella-wielding fans as trees all but buckled in the gale and miniature rivers streamed down each side of the finish line crash barriers, Vingegaard seemed oblivious to the conditions at the Monte Aloia summit, attacking late on a shortened stage to win by 16 seconds from Lenny Martínez (Groupama-FDJ), with Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost) third at 45 seconds.
“You didn’t see, like, anything?” Vingegaard asked reporters somewhat incredulously when told that the exceptionally adverse meteorology had not only forced organisers to remove one of the two planned ascents of the final climb, but also prevented anything but fixed finish line TV cameras from operating normally.
After two wins in the two previous days, in any case, anything but a Vingegaard victory would have been a major surprise, and the Dane buttresed his already healthy advantage to a final total of 1:55 on Martínez and 2:11 on Egan Bernal.
The Colombian once again showed that even in the toughest of weather conditions at O Gran Camiño, he has been making steady progress back towards the top of the sport.
“It was a very wet day, I can tell you that,” Vingegaard told reporters in response to the media’s plea for information about the completely untelevised stage. “On the last climb we caught the last breakaway guys and we wanted to go for the stage win.
“Until three kilometres to go we were all together and then it split up, at one point it was a good moment for me to attack and I tried. Luckily no-one could follow and from there, it was just a question of going to the finish.”
Vingegaard said he did not think it had been his hardest day on the bike, saying that Friday’s stage was more difficult due to the low temperatures. “That was worse, and then of course last year here with the snow [on stage 1, which was suspended] was even worse than that,” he said.
“Today was just super-super wet from the start, not really cold but I think if we had had to go down from here at the summit, probably it would have been.
“It was also really windy with some really strong gusts so it was pretty dangerous with that. In some…
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