Skjelmose and Carapaz go from Tour de France highs to Vuelta lows: 'It's kind of an experiment’

On the seventh stage of the Vuelta a España, the gaps between the general classification contenders remained relatively small, but there were still two losers. Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) lost 1.20 minutes to Tadej Pogacar and about a minute to the riders they were hoping to battle for a spot on the podium.

Skjelmose and Carapaz finished sixth and eighth, respectively, in the Tour de France, with the latter also winning two stages and the polka-dot jersey. With those achievements under their belts, they started the Vuelta a España highly motivated. Both riders expressed ambitions to reach the podium, but after seven days, they are already trailing by quite a few minutes.

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"It was really awful," Skjelmose admitted to TV2 after the seventh stage, which was won by Andreas Leknessund. "It was a bad day."

"I think I'm putting in more effort during the Tour than I expected. I don't think the numbers quite match what I saw on the computer a month and a half ago," he says, referring to his wattage during the Tour.

"It's kind of an experiment," Skjelmose reluctantly admits on TV2. “I wasn’t supposed to be competing for the general classification in the Tour, and yet I ended up doing just that. And I don’t know if that’s the reason, but I am paying a small price for it,” he realizes while riding the Vuelta a España.