Half an hour after stage 6 of the Vuelta a España had finished atop Pico Jano, Remco Evenepoel walked into the press conference truck wearing the red jersey and already bearing a sizeable lead on his overall rivals. His performance suggested rather emphatically that he could go on and win this race in Madrid, even if he declined to say as much when he picked up the microphone.
“Oh, it’s a difficult question. There are still two more weeks of racing, and a lot of hard stages to come already this week,” Evenepoel said. “Now we are in red, we will do everything to keep it for as long as possible, but I cannot say on this moment that I’m going to win the Vuelta, not at all. It’s really difficult to say.”
It’s a whole lot easier to think it, mind, after his remarkable exhibition in Cantabria on the first mountain stage of the Vuelta. Amid low cloud and driving rain, Evenepoel delivered the latest outlandish feat of strength of his young career, a display that perhaps even surpassed his astonishing efforts at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Clásica San Sebastián earlier this season.
Evenepoel had to settle for second place on the stage, 15 seconds behind the earlier escapee Jay Vine (Alpecin-Deceuninck), but he had the considerable consolation of seizing the maillot rojo and distancing almost all of the pre-race favourites. He now lies 1:01 clear of Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) and almost two ahead of Simon Yates (BikeExchange-Jayco) and Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe), while Richard Carapaz (Ineos) is already 2:56 back.
“I think what I achieved today is as beautiful as my win in Liège,” Evenepoel said. “My first leader’s jersey in a Grand Tour is an amazing feeling, and even though I didn’t win the stage, it’s the same feeling for me. Obviously, the Vuelta is far from over, that’s for sure, but we’re going to do our maximum to try to keep the jersey for the next three days and then we’ll see what it brings. There’s still something like 14 stages to go.”
When Evenepoel began his forcing with 9km of Pico Jano remaining, Carapaz was quickly distanced, with only an elite cadre of men like Roglic, Hindley and Yates able to follow his initial onslaught. Within a mile or so, however, even they had to relent under the sheer weight of his forcing. Only Enric Mas (Movistar) could hold his wheel, though the Spaniard’s grimace suggested that he was holding on by his fingertips at times.
“I did ask for help, but he never answered me,…
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