Remco Evenepoel's bid to claim a repeat victory in the Vuelta a España appears to be over after the Belgian was dropped 87.3km from the end of stage 15, a mountainous run to the Col du Tourmalet.
Evenepoel was dropped from the Jumbo-Visma-led peloton along with UAE Team Emirates co-leader João Almeida on the day’s second climb, the category 1 Col de Aubisque.
The pair settled back into a chase group towards the top of the climb, with much of Evenepoel’s Soudal-QuickStep squad dropping back to make the pace.
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However, at 1.5km from the top, Evenepoel - third place overall at the start of the day - dropped from the chase group as his teammates stuck with him. At the top of the climb, he lay at 1:45 from the head of the race and 1:10 down on the red jersey group.
Almeida, meanwhile, was still in the chase group which crossed the top at around 30 seconds behind race leader Sepp Kuss and his co-leaders Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard, as well as the rest of the main GC favourites.
Stage 13 will go on to tackle two more major climbs – the first-category Col de Spandelles, and the hors categorie Col du Tourmalet.
There had been rumours of illness going around the Soudal-Quickstep team for a week after Andrea Bagioli dropped out on stage 6, but the team stated during the stage that Evenepoel is not ill.
It is the second consecutive Grand Tour that the GC ambitions of the 23-year-old have been scuttled. He was leading the Giro d'Italia in May and won the stage 9 time trial before testing positive for COVID-19 on the first rest day and dropping out.
With 53km to go, Evenepoel was well over five minutes behind the red jersey on the Spandelles and the gap blew out to over seven minutes at the start of the Tourmalet.
