There are already some potential contenders who expected more from the first nine days of the Vuelta a España. For Giro champion Jai Hindley, there has been no heinous time loss, but a steady flow of gradual losses.
The back-to-back mountain finishes of stages 8 and 9 were especially damaging. The Bora-Hansgrohe leader was 54 seconds behind Evenepoel on on Colláu Fancuaya – a solid showing. However, on the lethal gradients of Les Praeres, he finished 2:45 down on the storming Belgian, behind over a dozen other GC rivals too.
On the race’s second rest day, Hindley is positioned ninth overall, 5:36 down on the lead. “I was hoping my legs were going to come good, I thought the prep I did beforehand was not too shabby,” he told Cyclingnews on Monday.
“I was hoping to go a bit better than I currently am, to be honest, but you get that sometimes. Sometimes when everything goes right beforehand, it doesn’t go right in the race and vice versa.
“So I’m not too sure what’s going on, but I’m still enjoying the racing. There’s still plenty of hard days to come and I’m still hoping that the legs are gonna turn around.”
Hindley feels that the top three overall is no longer in play for him at the Vuelta. “I think the podium might be a bit out of reach, the top five guys have just shown they’re really consistent and up there every day. They’re looking quite strong… but you never know,” he said.
What of the strongest of the lot so far? Hindley was “not surprised at all” to see the lofty level of Evenepoel. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if he wins the Vuelta,” he said. “He’s flying and fair play to him. There’s still a long way to go, you never know how he’s going to go in this last week but he’s done everything right so far.”
Hard racing since Dutch start
Hindley reflected on a tough opening half to the race. “Starting with the days in the Netherlands, they were maybe not the hardest on paper, but stage 3 was actually really hard. If you asked a lot of the riders how they felt, they’d say they were pretty nailed.
“That pretty much set the tone for the days to come. First stage in Spain was also really hard and pretty hot. There haven’t been too many days where we’ve just been rolling round: the breakaway has always taken a while to go and it’s been pretty aggressive racing at the start most days.
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