'Thursday is the first proper hard stage' - Jonas Vingegaard looks ahead to mountains after regaining Vuelta a España lead in team time trial

After a narrow defeat in the Figueres team time trial at the Vuelta a España against arch-rivals UAE Team Emirates-XRG, rather than express too many regrets about their near-miss in the team time trial, Jonas Vingegaard preferred to look at the positive elements of the day, with returning to the leader's jersey obviously right at the top of the list.

On a relatively short, rolling course, time gaps were always going to be fairly tight, and Vingegaard's team crossed the line just seven seconds slower than UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

Finishing second was enough to propel Vingegaard back into the overall lead, with two major climbing stages now the next big challenge, but it also confirmed that - as expected - the UAE duo João Almeida and Juan Ayuso are poised as his most dangerous threats on GC as well.

Vingegaard recognised he knew little of the upcoming incursion into the mountains at Andorra on stage 6 of the Vuelta a España, which culminates in the double whammy of a category 2 ascent of Comella and then the summit finish at Pal, last tackled by the Vuelta in 2010.

However, despite only knowing Pal from what he's seen online, the top Vuelta favourite did predict a major GC battle, particularly in the finale of the first of two back-to-back stages in the Pyrenees.

"I'm definitely expecting it to be a really hard day, tomorrow [Thursday], my rivals will try to attack me," Vingegaard said. "The last four or five kilometres are really hard, so there will definitely be a fight between GC guys for sure."

He would not be drawn on whether his objective is now to keep the red jersey regardless. Vingegaard's advantage is still less than ten seconds, and there are all the hardest stages yet to come, with Thursday's first high mountain test the first of many.

"For sure, my goal is Madrid, but it depends a bit on how the race will play out in the next few stages. Gaps have opened up now to the top 20 or top 30 overall."

Cross-head: The time trial test

Visma-Lease a Bike's TTT could best be described as uneven, given they were notably the fastest squad in the final segment of the time trial, with a four-second advantage in the split times on UAE for the last eight-kilometre section of the course around Figueres.

However, Visma were already trailing UAE by 12 seconds by that point in the TTT, after they put in a slower-than-expected middle section, and time-wise this mid-race deficit proved critical to the final outcome. While Visma managed to overhaul multiple squads such as Ineos and Lidl-Trek with their blisteringly fast finale, finishing five riders altogether in the front group compared to UAE's four, they simply could not regain previously lost time fast enough to overtake their key rivals.

Vinegegaard's teammate Matteo Jorgenson, a key player in the TTT given he had led the team away from the starting ramp in the opening acceleration, and was a driving force all the way through to the finale, told media afterwards, "I think we maybe misunderstood the wind from recon.

"We kind of thought it was a tailwind going out, so we held back a bit. But also, we always planned to go faster in the second half, so if we were faster in the second half with that tailwind, then it makes sense we came back [regained time]: just not enough for the win."

Jorgenson said that the tailwind question was "not a mistake," rather it was perhaps a factor in their losing out. He added that they would go away and analyse things calmly, because "we didn't win the stage and we didn't meet that objective. So we have some things to work on, but I felt really good."

Vingegaard was also upbeat overall, saying that they had done a "super good job and we went very fast," but he recognised too that they had been "a bit slower in the middle part and maybe we could have gone faster there. That's definitely something to look at. But overall, we can be happy with how we performed today."

Earlier this week, 18 of Visma's bikes were stolen in Italy when thieves broke into the team truck overnight after stage 2, but Vingegaard said that as far as he knew, none of them were time trial bikes, so that had not been an issue. However, he said, in the TT the team were definitely lacking their French sprinter Axel Zingle, who crashed badly on stage 2 and had to abandon.

Earlier in the day, team head of performance Mathieu Heijboer had even gone so far as to say that without Zingle, it would not be realistic to hope for the win, given the key role he'd played in their TTT victory in Paris-Nice back in March. But the squad came very close, all the same, and Vingegaard is in the lead once again - the key goal for the team in Spain, rather than stage wins, after all - thanks to the team's collective performance.

"I'm super-happy to be back in red, it's beautiful," Vingegaard said afterwards. "Yesterday I lost it, but every day in red is nice."

"However, Thursday is the first proper hard stage, so I have to be ready for another big fight."

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