Vuelta remains a contest after Almeida's Angliru power play - Analysis

This Vuelta a España has been a great many things. It briefly threatened to become a procession when Jonas Vingegaard ripped clear at Valdezcaray last weekend. It’s intermittently been a soap opera thanks to the spectacular uncoupling of Juan Ayuso and UAE Team Emirates-XRG. And it has, of course, been the site of repeated human rights protests against Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza.

In recent days, the sporting element of the Vuelta has felt rather secondary to the wider humanitarian and diplomatic context of the protests, and there was a further reminder at the foot of the Angliru on stage 13, when a demonstration in solidarity with Palestine briefly blocked the progress of the break.

After a short stoppage, the race resumed, and the ascent that followed was a reminder that this Vuelta remains a contest. Vingegaard retains the red jersey and he is still the obvious favourite, but João Almeida’s towering performance on the Angliru underlined that the bike race is far from over.

At Valdezcaray on stage 9, there was a palpable disparity between Visma | Lease a Bike’s precision-targeted support for Vingegaard and UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s half-hearted efforts on Almeida’s behalf. Although Almeida limited his losses to 24 seconds at the top, it was hard to shake off the idea that he was fighting with one arm tied behind his back.

That impression only intensified in the following days, when Ayuso’s departure from UAE was confirmed and when the Spaniard hit back by calling the management a “dictatorship.” The telenovela continued when Ayuso proceeded to win another stage in Cantabria on Thursday but then was distanced conspicuously early on the Alto del Cordal on Friday.

Ayuso insisted he was “disappointed” not to have contributed to Almeida’s victory on the Angliru and perhaps he was. The key point is that his absence from the front group was more or less moot, as UAE finally began to add up to something like the sum of their parts in support of Almeida. 

After Visma had dictated terms all day, UAE took over at the top of the penultimate climb, and king of the mountains Jay Vine – already winner of two stages – provided pivotal support for Almeida by setting a rasping but consistent tempo on the lower slopes of the Angliru.

Ivo Oliveira later dropped back from the break to lend a hand and then Felix Grossschartner – missing in action on several key occasions to this point – put in a fierce stint of pace-making that burned off men like Tom Pidcock (Q36.5), Egan Bernal (Ineos) and Matteo Jorgenson (Visma | Lease a Bike).

At the Vuelta to this point, UAE had raced like cycling’s answer to the Real Madrid galacticos of the early 2000s – a collection of sublimely talented individuals, but hardly a team. On the approach to the Angliru, by contrast, some discipline was finally added to their approach. It wasn’t quite Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, but for the first time in this Vuelta, UAE looked like they were riding to a plan that was focused squarely on Almeida. 

The team leader responded to their pressing by producing arguably the finest display of his career. Almeida took over in front with 6km of the climb remaining, and his forcing would soon prove too much for Sepp Kuss (Visma | Lease a Bike) and Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe). 

Only Vingegaard resisted. The two-time Tour de France winner never really looked like being dropped and he certainly never betrayed visible distress, but he confessed afterwards that Almeida had been the stronger man on the Angliru.

Indeed, despite Vingegaard’s avowed desire to win on the Angliru, he wasn’t able to come around Almeida at the summit. The stage victory fell to the Portuguese rider and so did four bonus seconds, bringing his GC deficit down to 46 seconds.

It was a meagre reward for his efforts on the climb, of course, but the gain had a symbolic value all the same. Almeida will hope they are the grains of rice that can start to tip the scale in his favour.

Almeida will be heartened by the thought of the 27km time trial in Valladolid next week, but he will also need more of the same in the mountains if he is to beat Vingegaard to this Vuelta. And above all, he will need a whole lot more from Ayuso. Whether he gets it, of course, is a whole other question.

Perhaps inadvertently, Ayuso put a slight dampener to the enthusiasm around Almeida’s performance with his comments after the stage. The Angliru and its wicked 23% slopes is a climb like no other. It’s an ascent to be endured rather than attacked, a mountain about momentum rather than sudden accelerations. Ayuso suggested that a grind like this was perfectly tailored to Almeida’s qualities as a diesel.

“He’s a rider known for this. He puts one pace and can hold it until the line," Ayuso said. “Angliru is one of the best climbs to do that because going on the wheel doesn't really matter.”

The problem for Almeida is that he can’t ride the Angliru every day, and the Vuelta’s second mountaintop finish in Asturias might be better tailored to kind of Vingegaard. On paper at least, La Farrapona looks like the kind of climb where Vingegaard can accelerate with intent, and it remains to be seen if Almeida will be able to follow. At Valdezcaray and again in Bilbao, Almeida wasn’t sharp enough to match his moves.

Still, Vingegaard confessed to fatigue atop the Angliru and he is also carrying the effects – mental and physical – of his second-place finish at the Tour de France. Like Tadej Pogacar in July, a tired Vingegaard kept Almeida at arm’s length here. 

La Farrapona will reveal an awful lot more about how the final week of this Vuelta will play out. But at least for now, Almeida has reason to keep believing. Or, as AS put it on Friday evening: “Almeida isn’t Pogacar, but neither is Vingegaard.”