Vingegaard and Visma | Lease a Bike shrug at UAE’s show of force: "If we wanted, we could have fought for the win“

“It was a great day, not an easy one,” concluded Jonas Vingegaard afterwards on Eurosport. The Dane lost his red leader's jersey to Torstein Træen of Bahrain Victorious in stage 6 on Thursday, and because the Norwegian was powerful, Vingegaard once again did not have to go to the podium for one of the jerseys.

“We didn't want to go for the stage and save our energy, so we decided not to do anything,” said Vingegaard about the tactics of Visma | Lease a Bike, which controlled the race for a long time and set the pace, but that was it. “It was a tough final climb, and if we wanted, we could have fought for the win. But we wanted to save the team a bit for the second and third weeks.”

That was also the analysis of sports director Jesper Mørkøv, via the team's official channels. "We were able to save some energy today, as Bahrain Victorious set the pace for much of the stage. In the end, we were well-positioned for the final climb. Jonas responded strongly to an attack by Almeida, and Sepp and Matteo also showed they are in good shape. All in all, a good day for our team."

“Those will be tough enough; today wasn't necessary,” said the top favorite for Vuelta victory. Vingegaard won the stage on day 2 of the Vuelta and took the red jersey. He wore the leader's jersey for only three stages, because he gave it away again on days 4 and 6. UAE Team Emirates-XRG, on the other hand, is eager to prove itself. The team won the team time trial on Wednesday, Jay Vine took the stage win and the mountain jersey on Thursday, and on Friday, it was Ayuso who won from the early breakaway.

In the GC, Vingegaard is still in the best position behind Traeen. Almeida is 8 seconds behind the Dane, while Soler is 31 seconds behind after seven days. Ayuso's stage win also saw the Spaniard climb back into the top 25 of the GC, although he is still just under five minutes behind Vingegaard.