Enric more comes to goal, the face is dried and under the towel a gesture of radiant happiness appears, unprecedented from that turn from 2018 in which he was second after winning Andorra’s decisive stage.
He recognizes it to himself, on the best day of him since he defends the colors of Movistar.
That solid leader, capable of fighting for the big turns, who saw the telephone team on him when he threw himself by his signing, illuminates at last in the toughest stage of what we have been back.
Only Primoz Rogllic endured wheel more on arrival in Velefique and that is equivalent to an outstanding, because right now there is no possible comparison between the Slovenian and the rest of the runners of this race.
Among them, Spanish is claimed as the strongest and asome as the only one capable of disabling Roglic Camino de Santiago, however unlikely that the mission seems.
Velefique’s tall ordered the strongest back, after a first week of emotion.
The hierarchies are now clear, with roglic in a head, but behind him and Michelangelo López on the next step, provisional podium of the race.
Egan Bernal exhibits weakness and the distribution of roles in INEOS is reopened, now with Adam Yates as an opponent to the headway of ranks.
Jack Haig also appears as an alternative in substitution of Mikel Landa that lived a Calvary that takes him from any option to fight in the general in which, curiously, it was a great day for the Bahrain, the winner of the stage thanks to an exhibition of Damiano
Caruso from the flight.
It was an electric day, with many different phases.
At the top collado Luisa, about 60 kilometers from Meta, INEOS proposed an infernal rhythm that accelerated the march and reduced distance from the flight, already headed by Caruso, less than two minutes.
Bernal Gregarios were treated to isolate Roglic, but the Jumbo took the guy and also Verona in the help of Mas and Lopez, already lost and the invaluable help of Valverde on a day of this caliber.
From then on, the jumbo resumed the head of the race, leading the platoon without hurry towards the decisive final ascension to Velefique, 13 kilometers at an average of 7.2%.
Arrived at the base of the port, the INEOS retaked the head to dismember the group.
In those first accelerations yielded and Landa, with all the ascension ahead, confirming the bad sensations that he had already sketched in previous arrivals.
He reached the goal four minutes from Mas and Roglic and is already 5:47 in the general, with three companions of his own team ahead (Haig, Mäder and Caruso).
Partial victories are already the only refuge of it for the two weeks remaining in competition.
In the first kilometers of rise, the toughest, began a game of cards between the second swords.
Yachts, the most active, tested several attacks and all of them answered ‘Supermán’ López, very attentive.
The group was making the accordion, with constant attacks and regrouping, in the central part of the ascension, the kindest of all.
By then, Aleksandr Vlasov had already found that he was going to lose a lot of time with the best.
The definitive attack occurred to something more than four kilometers and threw it more.
Only Roglic could respond to the hard change of rhythm proposed by the Balearic, with López to the expectation by covering his back and Bernal suffering without his partner Yates cared too much.
But and Roglic were making his way to the final meters, in which the highest speed of the Sloveno allowed him to grab the bonus and chop a second to Spanish.
Nothing that brings the superb performance of him.
“He had long ago he did not enjoy as much as this week,” he said later.
He is noticed.
