Vuelta a España leader Jonas Vingegaard has said that rather than risk his lead with a dramatic last mountain performance in Saturday's showdown summit finish at Bola del Mundo, his top priority is to make it to Madrid unscathed and with the red jersey safely on his shoulders.
On stage 19's largely uneventful sprint stage to Guijuelo, even at this late point in the Vuelta game, Vingegaard showed his race sharpness remained more than intact when he snatched a four-second time bonus at an intermediate sprint in Salamanca.
But that unexpected time gain only served to managed to amplify his perilously narrow GC advantage to 44 seconds on runner-up João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), and talking afterwards Vingegaard made it clear the margins are simply too tight to be looking to finish off the Vuelta with a mountaintop flourish.
Nor was it ever in his pre-stage calculations, he said, to go for the bonus seconds, but there was no point in ignoring such low-hanging fruit. Furthermore, he dismissed the idea that he was playing mind games with Almeida by grabbing the seconds with a categorical "No."
"It was not the plan, to be honest, to go for the bonus seconds it was just more we were on the front for possible echelons and we saw the opportunity to take those four seconds.
"So, it made for a pretty good day. Of course, four seconds will never decide the Vuelta, but you never know."
Vingegaard says he watched the last ascent back in 2012 of the crunch stage 20 Bola del Mundo summit finish on television and recognised it was a "pretty iconic climb." But it seemed that the emblematic status of Bola del Mundo, nor the fact that he had not won on the Angliru - as he had wanted- were not enough to convince him, it seemed, to change his strategy for Saturday's final mountain stage.
"Actually, I think the last week we've been more defensive, and obviously we're in the red jersey and we want to keep it. So I think tomorrow [Saturday], initially, we'll think more defensively. But of course, if we are fighting for the stage win, then we'll go for it."
Another indication that Vingegaard will likely to play it conservatively came when he said, "Tomorrow will tell us if my advantage now is time enough. Hopefully I have great legs like I had on stage 9" - where he won at Valdezcaray - "again, and I can keep the red jersey."
Defeated by Almeida on the Angliru, Vingegaard recognised that the Portuguese racer was a formidable opponent, particularly given his ability to "keep going hard for a very long time and he doesn't slow down and that's tough to stay on his wheel." He also agreed that the ongoing battle between Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Tom Pidcock (Q36.59 might well have collateral effects on his own duel with Almeida.
However, while also fully aware - he said - of the previous occasions in the Vuelta a España where the race had been won and lost in the sierras of Madrid on the last or second-to-last stage, Vingegaard remained adamant that he has enough fuel left in the tank to take the red jersey all the way to the finish in the Paseo de la Castellana on Sunday.
"Of course, that has happened before, but I will do everything I can to be sure that that doesn't happen tomorrow. I have the red jersey and I have good support from the team, and we'll do everything we can to keep it."
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