Nice to get a podium place there with Gesink. The rest of the team just taking the piss

Congrats on the win Mre. Yates winning makes it interesting for sure.

Congrats Mre! I hope I get to avoid Yates wherever possible in the next years.

I loved the presence of Mager in this break, and it very nearly worked out perfectly. Too bad Arndt wasn't in a position to pounce late either.

We need to get into the break again tomorrow to do better.
One day we'll win a ticket in the early KoM lottery, but I think it's been many seasons, if at all.

Slightly worrying to not see us try for the early breakaway for the third stage in a row. There should be no reason for us to not be aggressive, and fingers crossed we turn it around and start to try for and also participate in breakaways.

Congratulations on the stage win, Mre! You're "developing" Yates into a very cool rider

So far so good for Kritskiy!

Good stage for my team. Valls being attentive, vdP strong and up into the youth lead.

Only negatives, Ciccone was pretty weak and Velits also lost again. Both though might play out well if this means more attacks later on.

What do you do when you realize leading with 1,5 km to go is the wrong move because you tire too quickly? Correct, leading from 3km out without attacking on the next stage. Completely foolproof way - this strategy cannot fail!


I'd have an easier time accepting the loss when the likes of Lecuisinier, Gesink etc were just stronger due to having too much climbing in their legs but just throwing away any chances for stage wins and red by entirely predictable tactic fails is tough for me. Guess i royally screwed up my leader planning by sending Skujins here



At least Tvetcov did well to stick with the front group. Could be valuable going forward..

Great win from Lecuisinier who have performed stellar in the hills this season. He also took a 2nd place from a hilly stage at the Paris-Nice earlier this year.

4 days into the Vuelta we are 50 points short of our Giro total (including GC points). Talk about contrast...

Obviously it sucks to have top puncheurs lose out on valuable points, but I can't complain. Much needed succes really!

I am a bit bummed that Budyak is performing this bad though. I really thought he would be in contention for the U25 jersey (or atleast top 3) after these for stages. Losing 3'38" here is not good enough.

Also a bit bummed that Bongiorno lost 1'15" here. Despite him being a good domestique towards the end he really should be able to make the elite group of 28 riders here. Especially if we want to challenge for the Team GC, where we are already far down. Spanopolous on the other hand with a very strong effort with Barta also doing decently. The latter is now in 7th of the U25 and could realistically climb a couple of positions. Probably not towards top 3 though to gain a bit of points on the way, but who knows.

Overall we have to be very very thrilled with a stage win, the GC lead, and that Lecuisinier is already on a quest for the points jersey too. I'm sure Grosu and Harrison isn't too fond of Lecuisinier being that close at this state.

2nd in the KOM is a nice little added bonus, while we know that won't last. With no KOM points on offer tomorrow it's 4+4 guaranteed points, and only a cat 3 on stage 6 could see him even survive in 2nd after that too. It's difficult to tell how much is on offer for the finish line, but unless the breakaway group takes it (which they are likely to do though) he could even charge after the KOM lead - especially when looking at stage 7!

So with a bit of luck there can be "free" points on offer until stage 11 where things will obviously change in the KOM battle for good.

16, 20 and 32 seconds buffer on the main rivals is a good place to be in this early. With a solid effort on the remaining hills/mountains before the TT we might be able to survive in the leaders jersey as the TT is only 25km if I'm not mistaken.

Will we actually get less breakaway wins here?

I'm still all-in for my riders to join them breakaways. I don't to end up with no other rider than Haig inside the Top-50 and show nothing more. Come on, show our colors, guys!

Solid result for Haig. Can't really expect more than low Top-10 results in those hills, and with no time loss other than bonus seconds, I'm pleased.

Congrats, SotD. The top favorite delivers early, what a shocker!

Big one for Festina; if he keeps red all the way to the end, that's easily 1000+ points... Congrats on a great GT start, SotD!
From a neutral perspective, I'd have been happier if someone else had taken red, as I'm afraid it could be a pretty boring race now with the jersey bonus added to his anyway amazing skills. But we'll see, breakways aren't excluded as demonstrated in Italy

Great showing again from the PCT teams, definitely deserve their wildcards here! It would really have been a shame to deny Tenorio his home GT.

Congrats on the win, SotD! Could be a huge race for PHL with the red jersey already on his shoulders. Good to see Nesset in the first group as well!

Atleast Shikai stayed in the front group to not fall behind early on. Hoping he can improve once we get to the mountains, and that we return to some flat stages, so Hayakawa can grab more points.

Thanks guys (in general).

Easily 1000+ would require quite some stage results too though.

288 points in leaders jersey from stage 5-21 + 500 for the win is just 788 points. He already scored 134 points though, so it's true, that he doesn't need a lot of stage succes from here on to land 1000 points.

He's just 223 points behind what he scored last season, so it has definately paid off to train him although it was a very expensive training...

Well, Taaramäe scored around 850 in the Giro, by taking the Maglia Rosa after stage 19 only, and without a single stage win. Lecuisinier with 1st and 2nd already has some great results early on, putting him high up in both points and KoM standings. But well, we saw in the Giro that one odd stage is enough to cut down the possible points by quite a lot...

And yeah, his training sure was a great investment - and I think the Vuelta was a perfect choice for him, too, given all those big names that are absent and will likely do the Tour...

Absolutely. It was just to show, that 1000+ doesn't just come without stage results

I thought both Phinney and Spilak would be here to be honest. Looking at the startlist it would be a massive blow if he failed to win the race - but having two other "topriders" (high end subtop at the very least) with better TT stats you'll never know. Some times gaps can be hard to create.

Before the season started I was a bit irritated with myself for picking an "OR" goal between Vuelta and Tour, as I shouldn't have picked the Tour, but rather went for "Win Giro/Vuelta", as I think I ended up with a team perfectly suited for the Giro in the end. I could have featured a strong TTT setup with some decent climbers around him too. So had I chosen the proper goals, Lecuisinier would probably have been at the Giro.

In hindsight this is obviously a very good race for him, when 1) The majority of the competitors have gone for the TdF (or maybe a No GT season for some?) and 2) The results pan out in our favor.

I didn't expect to be in red until sometime close to the end of week 2. So having it now is a big bonus!

Will be hard for anyone to dethrone Lecuisinier. Congrats SotD

Formolo looked strong again but sadly he hit the front a bit too soon.

it makes me slightly optimistic to see Reis in/around the top 10 in the last two hilly stages, that shouldn't really suit him that well.
Congrats SotD!

Great fight by Grosu to try to hold onto that group but in the end it wouldn't have mattered as he would still have lost the jersey to Lecuisinier.

Skuijins must be attacking from so far out because he is so much better than anyone else on paper and he thinks he can also get a time gap to the others, not only the stage win

Another nice outing from Gesink. Cool to be inside that Desigual sandwich.

Congrats SotD!

Lecuisinier in red this early isn't great for us in the Desigual camp, but does take some of the pressure off our team to pace. The fact Lecuisinier hasn't opened a gap to Tenorio on these opening two hilly climbs gives me hope that Tenorio can hang when the roads get really steep. Best case scenario is Yates wins red off Lecuisinier before we get to the first mountain stage, and Tenorio somehow holds red after the TT. A man can dream...

That's a perfect stage for Festina and Lecuisinier. Congratulations, SotD! Must admit I'm slightly envious of such a great start in a GT when you've got the overall favourite. Reminds me of Taaramäe's Vuelta last season, which was brilliant.

Galta being solid and staying in the front group is important and good. He could, and maybe even should, fight for a top 5 here, which would be a very, very nice result, but there's a long way to go. That's the positive having done two tricky hilly stages. The negative is that it looks like we completely don't care about breakaway attempts. We need to get up front when the race gets into the second and third week, as that's our chance for stage results here.