Big day for Vine, but especially for Vingegaard: Loses red, and UAE’s strategy already in shambles

After three days in Italy, one day in France, and the team time trial in Spain, the peloton headed for Andorra on Thursday. We can just as easily describe this microstate as a mountain state, because in the middle of the Pyrenees, the road mainly goes up or down.

It was therefore no surprise that the route climbed from the start in Olot, with the Collada de Sentigosa—an 11.1-kilometer climb at 4.2 percent —where, of course, there were plenty of attacks. One of the first attempts was ultimately successful, with a strong group of ten riders.

Who were there? Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Pablo Castrillo (Movistar), Louis Vervaeke, Gianmarco Garofoli (Soudal Quick-Step), Ramses Debruyne (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Archie Ryan, James Shaw (EF Education-EasYPost), Bruno Armirail (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Torstein Træen (Bahrain Victorious), and Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana), all of whom are good climbers.

Visma | Lease a Bike - with Dylan van Baarle as the workhorse - controlled the lead and allowed it to increase steadily, without giving too much leeway. Approaching the second climb of the day, they offered just over three minutes to the ten riders. The Collade des Toses was 24.4 kilometers long, but has ‘only’ an average gradient of 3.5 percent.

On that climb, Vervaeke took the maximum points on behalf of Soudal Quick-Step, while Vine and Fortunato also had their eyes on the mountain points. Meanwhile, the riders also had to contend with heavy rain and bitter cold on the border between Spain and Andorra: it was pouring with rain, while the temperature barely rose above 10 degrees Celsius. And then a long descent of 60 kilometers is no fun either...

The peloton used this period mainly for refueling and toilet breaks, which meant that the breakaway's lead increased to around six minutes. Meanwhile, Koen Bouwman (Jayco AlUla) had to withdraw, after Pepijn Reinderink (Soudal Quick-Step), Simon Carr (Cofidis), and Arjen Livyns (Lotto) had already been forced to withdraw due to illness.

With just under thirty kilometers to go, the final began with the Alto de la Comella, 4.2 kilometers at 8 percent. Just at that moment, it also started to hail heavily, which added a little extra mystique to the climbs. This also increased the nervousness, causing the gap to drop from six to four minutes. And, more importantly, Joao Almeida got into trouble very early on.

However, this turned out to be due to a mechanical problem, allowing the Portuguese rider to regain his position at the front quickly. Meanwhile, his teammate Vine broke away at the front after taking the mountain points. On his home roads, the Aussie immediately rode away from his fellow breakaway riders, making the winning move before the final climb.

In the peloton, everyone agreed with this situation, although we did see Juan Ayuso get into trouble quite early on. The Spaniard had to let go early on and saw his classification ambitions go up in smoke. For Lidl-Trek, this was the reason to increase the pace even further and prepare an attack by Ciccone.

Vingegaard was right on his wheel and took over with gusto, while Almeida had to come from a bit further back. Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step) and David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) encountered further difficulties and had to let the other favorites in the group go ahead. In the end, however, most of them were evenly matched.