The thought is inevitable: the observer wonders what must go through the mind of Remco Evenepoel, the leader of the Vuelta, seeing how his teammates fade away and even crash against the asphalt when he most needs them (Fausto Masnada) and how his Rivals sharpen their knives: the Jumbo de Roglic (champion in 2019, 2020 and 2021), the Movistar de Mas, the Ineos that have Carlos Rodríguez but are not what they were five years ago, even the AG2R.
David de la Cruz, who this Sunday has spent a good part of the stage escaping along with 28 other brave men, understands a lot about that. He cycles for Astana, dolphins for Supermán López and a few months ago, in an interview for this newspaper, he confessed:
-In a three-week race there is always a bad day. There always is.
What was Evenepoel thinking?
Would he leave saying that those 48 seconds lost against Roglic the day before had been the price to pay for the inevitable bad day, De la Cruz dixit?
Or would there be more?
And how to get rid of that?
How to deal with the pain that was coming now, the weight of the queen stage, punctuated by a range of terrible peaks and crowned with a long ascent of almost 29 km to the 2,510 m altitude of Hoya de la Mora, in Sierra Nevada, with Initial slopes up to 20%?
Those fearsome slopes take shape and, suddenly, Evenepoel recovers a pawn (Vervaeke, dropped from the group of 29 brave) and seems to grow bigger: he takes a step forward, one less tooth and legs for what do I want you. He takes the head of the favorite group.
There goes the leader!
There goes the leader, or has he just put up a smokescreen.
Well, in reality, it's not going well at all and that's normal: Evenepoel (22) is more of a rider than a climber, he's more of a classic lover, he's certainly not a high-mountain cyclist. Evenepoel is compact and rocky, with his 1.71m height and 61 kilos, he is not a strip of legs like sticks, the legs of Contador, those of Froome who is now ascending on the bus or those of chicken Rasmussen, and For this reason, as the slope lengthens and the altitude soars, the Belgian's thighs swell like hams and he goes into crisis.
Superman López jumps, Enric Mas jumps and Roglic crouches down, sniffing out his moment, perhaps the prey is hot.
The Slovenian does not jump.
He prefers to wait.
Evenepoel is definitely alone now, what should he think. He understands that he has a decent, not definitive, advantage over his closest rivals (1m49s over Roglic, 2m43s over Mas), so he looks down, analyzes cadence and watts and looks for his place in the world.
You have to suffer.
At this point, nine kilometers from the finish line, the stage is a mess, a trickle of escapees who press the earpiece and heed the orders of their directors.
Just as Vervaeke has stopped to give Evenepoel a cable (his work is minuscule, Vervaeke can't take it anymore), Carapaz also stops to assist Carlos Rodríguez (Rodríguez gives up half a minute with the good guys, his battle with Juan Ayuso is magnificent, generational companion) and De la Cruz (Superman's dolphin) stops and, in that scenario, Mas takes out oil.
Like Evenepoel, Mas doesn't have pawns either – Valverde and Verona aren't coming – but he has sticks for legs and feels on his own terrain, the high mountains, so he goes after Superman and steals seconds from the others, Evenepoel and Roglic, and for a few moments he even caresses second place in the general classification, subtracting 40 seconds from the Slovenian, who is now tired of waiting after Evenepoel and, 1.5 km from the finish line, also punishes him.
You have to suffer!
Evenepoel looks like cannon fodder. He analyzes figures, calculates, speculates, pedals, don't let them stray too far, don't lose sight of them, Monday is the rest day...
Anything goes when looking for resources.
Thoughts lead you to fruition. He endures the attack, he endures as he had the day before, but he gives up 42 seconds to Mas (36 plus the six-second bonus for his second place; Thymen Arensman prevails, the only escapee who strokes to the shore) and fifteen to Roglic .
And the observer says to himself: have we seen another bad day for the Belgian, or does Evenepoel see himself on the brink of collapse, like the fighter in the ring?
