Tadej Pogačar remained in the overall lead of the Vuelta a España for a second straight stage on Sunday, but the UAE Team Emirates-XRG racer explained afterwards that it was more by accident than by design.
It was true that Pogačar had been quick to follow Wout Van Aert when the Belgian shot off the front on the hilly finale into Manosque. After all, the Visma-Lease a Bike racer had made no secret before the stage that a second spell in red after his first week Vuelta lead of two years ago would definitely have been to his liking, so it looked like Pogačar was intent on defending the lead.
However, as Pogačar explained after the fraught, grinding uphill finale to stage 2, which ended with just 41 riders in the front group, his main reason for chasing down Van Aert had more to do with an unwritten rule in the current peloton: namely that whenever Van Aert attacks, it's almost invariably worth trying to go with him.
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"For sure when Wout goes, you have to react immediately," Pogačar told reporters afterwards.
"It happens so many times that when he goes, you can be 99% sure that it's the winning move, so with Wout you always have to follow.
"Any other riders, in one second you assess the situation of who it is, then you always have to react really fast - who is it, who is capable of coming to a finish like this.'
"But today with Wout, if I didn't follow, I think he would have won the stage."
At that point Pogačar didn't know if the red jersey could have been lost anyway to Ethan Hayter (Soudal-QuickStep), after the Briton, narrowly defeated in the opening time trial, had clinched a bonus sprint thanks to making a long-distance move, and briefly become leader on the road.
Rather, all Pogačar was interested in was seeing if he could grab a second stage win in as many days - and if he remained in the lead, then so much the better.
"Mentally, I was ready to lose it. Ethan Hayter had been really smart in break, he got six seconds, which put him in red jersey. So I was already thinking, 'OK, I lose the jersey no worries, I'll go tomorrow [Monday] wearing my World Champion's kit, which would be nice, too'."
But as matters turned out, Pogačar's move with Van Aert was sucked back in after the Slovenian didn't collaborate with the Belgian, knowing perhaps - and as happened at Paris-Roubaix, his one defeat of the season so far, that he would not have won in a sprint against him.
"I didn't know it was going [to be] such a hard final, it actually suited me," Pogačar explained. "Then when Wout went, I didn't hesitate, I went immediately, but he opened a gap too quickly.
"I tried to follow, then recover, maybe I should have committed then, but then I think I would still be in checkmate, and it wouldn't be possible to win.
"But I gave it a go today, it was really good, and I'm looking forward to another chance tomorrow."
The mountains are never that far away in the Vuelta, and this time on stage 3, the riders head into the Pyrenees for a long, grinding ascent of the Col de Mont-Louis, followed by a much shorter, Cat.2 ascent to Font Romeu.
Back in the day, race designer Fernando Escartín predicted that stage 3 would end in a small group sprint of some 40 riders, but as the peloton knows only too well, almost any day in a bike race can rapidly turn into a Pogačar day - and in the Vuelta, that means he has another chance to remain in the lead as well.
"Tomorrow [Monday] is a different scenario for the red jersey, as the race is already climbing, and maybe every day we will have to assess what we have to do in the middle of the stage if it's worth to keep pushing for it for red jersey or not," Pogačar said.
"But the next two days are good for us, so maybe we can keep the jersey for another two days and maybe go for the stage too."
Rather than get overly obsessed with holding la roja from beginning to end of the Vuelta, though,- as has been speculated in some quarters - Pogačar took a different view on that. As he saw it, in the early part of a Grand Tour it was more a question of defending the top spot overall as best as possible, while accepting losing the lead was also possible.
"When you have the leader's jersey, you always appreciate it, you go from moment to moment, you wear it with honour. But sometimes in a Grand Tour, it happens that there's no chance to keep it. There's a big chance that some day like this happens."
"I don't think any rider was thinking like this in the past to try to keep the jersey all the way to the finish. In the Giro [in 2024] I kept it from stage 2, it's true, but it's not the goal.
"You never know, maybe I could have lost it today, I could lose it tomorrow. You never know."
But if, as Pogačar seemed to be saying, the first week of any Grand Tour rarely has a fully defined GC, what stage 2 of the Vuelta did remind everybody for sure was that Pogačar isn't just a dab hand at making his trademark breakaway long-distance solo moves. He also knows exactly which wheels, like Van Aert's, are the right ones to follow in late breakaways, too.
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