It wasn’t Jay Vine’s kind of weather, but it was definitely his kind of day. The Australian had targeted the ascent of Pico Jano before this Vuelta a España began, and the climb proved as amenable in reality as it had appeared in the road book.
Vine famously won his passage to the professional peloton by way of riding his turbo trainer to win an online competition, but there were no home comforts on stage 6 of the Vuelta, played out on a mountainside doused in rain and shrouded in low cloud. His first victory as a professional was earned the hard way and in the most arduous of circumstances.
“I’m still using Zwift to prepare for races, because I’m a bit of a softy,” Vine joked when he took a seat in the press conference truck afterwards. “If the weather was like this when I was at home in Andorra, I wouldn’t have been riding outdoors. I still use Zwift to prepare for important events, especially because in rainy weather, you can’t predict what other road users will be doing. But a lot of my training is on the road, because fortunately the weather is very good in Andorra.”
If Vine’s remarkable power-to-weight ratio presented him with his first professional contract at the start of 2021, his displays on the road last season earned him a renewal from Alpecin-Deceuninck. And even though the team is built around the talents of men like Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen, the 26-year-old has carved out his own, distinct niche at the Belgian squad.
“The team is highly focused on the sprints and Classics, that’s pretty obvious because we’ve got some of the best Classics riders on the planet,” Vine said. “But we had three guys in the front group today, and they were able to place me going into the base of the climb.”
First pro win
On his Vuelta debut a year ago, Vine caught the eye with a fine third-place finish atop Pico Villuercas and he was sent to this year’s race with the aim of capturing a mountaintop victory. Through the early days of this Vuelta, he had deliberately shipped time in the general classification with the aim of infiltrating breaks, but he missed the early move on stage 6 and he was instead condemned to win the hard way, by attacking from the group of favourites.
“It’s almost unreal. I got a flat tyre in the first 5k and I missed the early break, although it was still the team’s plan for me to go…
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