Two days after Adam Yates unleashed his inner Tadej Pogačar to go for a 60-kilometre solo breakaway to victory in Sierra Nevada, the next question is where the Briton can go from here in the battle for the overall win in the Vuelta a España in Madrid on September 8.
While the UAE Team Emirates racer said on Sunday that his main goal was the stage 9 win in Granada, his long-distance move also netted him a 3:45 time gap on the GC favourites. The Briton's bad crash on stage 6 and tough day at Villuercas in the heat had all but left him on the sidelines of the overall. But turning that round with an amazing display of climbing power on Sunday in Sierra Nevada put Yates back in the GC game with a vengeance.
After an uneventful opening second week stage for the top riders in the Vuelta a España GC standings, Yates remains in seventh place at 5:13 on overall leader Ben O'Connor (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale). He's also heading the King of the Mountains classification, jointly tied on 22 points with stage 10 winner Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike).
As UAE team manager Joxean Fernánez Matxin told Cyclingnews, after being given a free pass on stage 9 thanks to his major time gap - O'Connor said Yates had not been on their 'must-follow' radar that day. Moving back up on GC, Yates now has a much more limited margin to go clear. However, Matxin also pointed out, "there are some very difficult days to come in this Vuelta," and those are exactly the kinds of stages where Yates has shown he can shine the brightest.
"He's certainly up there," Matxin said at the stage 10 start regarding Yates and the overall. "He's 90 seconds down on [triple Vuelta winner Primoz] Roglič, and in a single day, he effectively recovered what he lost from suffering in Villuercas on stage 4 with the heat and above all in the stage [6] where he crashed so hard and lost time. But he's still five minutes behind Ben O'Connor."
The cooler weather of northern Spain and likely for the rest of the Vuelta, will benefit Yates, who struggled in the extreme heat, Matxin said. But again, he pointed out, "It's better weather for everybody, not just Adam."
"I'm always looking at the positive side of things, though, and as Adam had that extra time loss after Villuercas and the crash, he was able to move a bit more from a long distance, he had a bit more freedom of manoeuvre."
"Now he's going to be more controlled again, but there are plenty of hard stages to come."
The key point of reference in the Vuelta remains, in any case, Primož Roglič with his uneven performances in the mountains to date - two summit finish victories, but also a remarkably flat performance in Sierra Nevada, where Roglič admitted he had suffered - central to how the race could play out. But as Matxin pointed out, too, the difference between Roglič's and O'Connor's strengths on the climbs adds to the uncertainty and makes for an even more unpredictable race.
"I don't think it's so much a case of Primoz having good days and bad days. It's more that he's really good on the short and very explosive climbs, but if you force him to go at a steady pace on longer climbs, he suffers a bit more. Which is the exact opposite of O'Connor, who's fine on the long climbs but who suffers a lot on the shorter ones."
While there is much talk of a power vacuum at the moment in the Vuelta, the Slovenian's position in cycling's unofficial GC hierarchy remains, as Matxin pointed out, "the fourth in the big four," alongside Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep).
"What we've got now is a very open race, with lots of attacks and lots of testing moves," he agreed, "but let's see what Roglič does from here on, too."
As for another Slovenian who has already won two Grand Tours this season, Matxin confirmed - as was already published by the GP Quebec and Montreal organiser on Tuesday - that Pogačar will be racing in both Canadian World Tour rounds in September. He'll then finish his season, as was already scheduled, at the World Championships and the Italian autumn Classics. But for now and for the next two weeks, the eyes of the cycling world are on what Adam Yates, Roglič and the other Vuelta a España GC contenders can achieve in Spain.
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