After a low-key fourth on the latest Vuelta a España summit finish, race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) provided some homespun wisdom to explain how he felt about a stage where, to him, simply getting through with no time loss felt like enough of an achievement.
Vingegaard's last major attack on the mountains in the Vuelta is now more than two weeks old, coming on stage 9 when he roared away to an unexpected but well-calculated victory at Valdezcaray in the rain.
Since then, the Dane has simply defended his overall advantage, ceding a few seconds thanks to time bonuses in an uphill sprint against arch-rival João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) on the Angliru, but slightly recouping his losses on the Farrapona and again, with a late burst of speed, on stage 17 on El Morredero.
The GC positions remain almost identical to a week ago, with Vingegaard going into the race's one individual time trial with a 50-second advantage on Almeida. That's surely less of a gap than he'd have liked at this point, but as he told reporters at the summit of El Morredero, that's the advantage he has, so he'll have to work with it.
"Of course, I hoped to make a difference today, but I think we can be happy with how it went," Vingegaard said at the summit, and after a day where he had simply followed wheels in the front group.
The Dane said he had hoped to have had the energy to attack, and on the lower slopes of El Morredero, the presence of teammate Matteo Jorgenson driving away on the front created expectations that he would do exactly that. Instead, as Vingegaard put it, as his energy levels fell lower and lower, he'd simply managed to get through - and he was satisfied with that.
"To be honest, five or six of us were quite equal today. I didn't have the best day, but I survived, and I guess the days when you need to survive, the days when you don't feel 100% - that's a good day."
After delivering what almost felt like a life lesson rather than a review of his performance, Vingegaard readily recognised that he had not been firing on all cylinders on the one major ascent of the day.
"No, it was not my best day, but at least I didn't lose any time on a bad day, that's quite OK. From now on, I'm just looking forward to tomorrow [Thursday] and focusing on the time trial."
Asked about his previous TT in the Vuelta, coincidentally enough, also in Valladolid back in 2023, Vingegaard said bluntly, "That was an awful one. But hopefully I can do better. It's a flat time trial, and we'll see.
"The plan was to go for the stage, because we don't know how many more mountain stages there will be," Jorgenson said in a brief interview with Eurosport, indirectly referring to the ongoing uncertainty about the Vuelta's upcoming stages because of off-race protests.
"Obviously, it would have been nice for a different outcome, but it's still a good result," he concluded. "We got a bit of time on Almeida."
Given the events of the last weeks and despite stage 17 being the calmest day on the Vuelta since it returned from Italy on stage 5, the ongoing situation of the pro-Palestine protests remains firmly at the back of everybody's minds, with big demonstrations expected tomorrow [Thursday] in Valladolid.
Before the stage it emerged that riders from all the teams had reached an agreement to neutralize the day's racing completely if there had been any more disturbances blocking the road like on stages 11 and 1 While that did not prove necessary, to go to such extremes on Thursday's incident-free trek out of Galicia and into neighbouring Castilla, Vingegaard, as race leader, was late asked what he made of that decision.
"I think one major problem cycling has had in the last few years is that teams and riders have not been able to stand together, and I think the most important thing is that now we are standing together in situations like this," Vingegaard pointed out.
"When a decision is made, everybody stands by it. I can agree or not agree with it, but that's the most important thing."
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