Project 'All-in for João Almeida' takes another twist on stage 15 of the Vuelta with active Jay Vine

UAE has already won seven (!) stages this Vuelta: two with Vine, two with Juan Ayuso, one with Almeida, one with Marc Soler and the team time trial on day 5. Thanks to his aggressive riding, Vine has been wearing the mountains jersey for quite some time now, and in Sunday’s Stage 15, the Australian extended his lead in that classification.

Vine claimed maximum points on the two categorized climbs in the opening phase of the stage, adding 15 points to his tally and pulling further ahead of Jonas Vingegaard. The Dane from Visma | Lease a Bike now sits second in the KOM standings, 39 points behind. Vine’s total after his day in the break is now 61 points, giving him a growing lead of 22 points as the current KOM leader.

Jay Vine didn’t have to stick to the “all-in for Almeida” plan on Sunday, a strategy officially declared by team boss Joxean Matxin on the day Almeida won the stage to the Angliru. We had already seen Vine, in the polka dot jersey, working hard for his team leader during the mountain stages of the second week, but there was no rest day for him in stage 15. “It was a long, hard day,” he said.

Why did Vine push so hard even after securing the KOM points? “When you’ve got such a big breakaway group and Pedersen is in there, and we’re all heading to the finish together, the outcome is pretty much decided. After I took the points, I decided to keep riding with Louis (Vervaeke). If we had had just one more guy with us, and a bit more cooperation, I think we could’ve stayed away,” he said.