Zonneveld predicts a battle of fading champions: "Vingegaard and Almeida are both exhausted"

In the seventeenth stage, the six best climbers of this Vuelta rode together to the top, before Giulio Pellizzari took the win. The headwind made it very difficult to break away. “But it's also because the two strongest riders in the race, Vingegaard and Almeida, are both exhausted,” Zonneveld said in his podcast, In de Waaier. “They're just running out of energy.”

It was a strange stage: Visma | Lease a Bike had exhausted itself entirely to prevent the breakaway group from getting a chance. The team was still dominant on the first slopes of the climb, but when Vingegaard had to do it himself, he stayed put. And that was not a strategic decision, according to the former rider. “If he had been able to do better, this would have been the day to decide the Vuelta.”

Because Almeida dropped out quite early. "No one from UAE was anywhere to be seen, they're all riding their own race. Almeida was dropped and then had to close the gap on his own. He's riding into the wind to close that gap. That's the maximum; he's completely at his limit. That was very clear to Vingegaard. The fact that he didn't seize that opportunity to decide this Vuelta says a lot about the state of his legs."

Almeida eventually managed to close the gap to the front, but neither he nor his Danish rival made a move in the difficult final kilometers. Pellizzari took advantage and rode away, and behind him, Vingegaard and Almeida were beaten. “Today it was pretty clear that Pidcock and Hindley were better; they rode away and picked up some bonus seconds.”

The fact that Vingegaard was left behind in that final sprint is a bad sign, according to Zonneveld. “He hasn't lost a single sprint to Hindley in this Vuelta, and here he loses both the sprint and gets left behind. And I'm not even talking about Pidcock. He's riding him at a distance, 5 seconds or so. He couldn't even sprint for the bonus seconds anymore.”

It ultimately painted a strange picture: the favorites were watching each other. That pretty much sums up this Vuelta, which stands in stark contrast to the oh-so-entertaining Giro. However, both races are exciting until the very last moment. "Back then, it was more like everyone was attacking and then coming back together again, but here, no one is attacking. In terms of spectacle, it's not very entertaining, but it is interesting."

A time trial is scheduled for Thursday. Normally, that would cause significant differences, but now that it has been shortened to just 12 kilometers, the focus is mainly on stage 20, with the finish on the grueling Bola del Mundo. “That should be the stage that decides the Vuelta, especially the last 4 kilometers of that climb. If that stage is completed or ridden,” Zonneveld adds.