Since the Vuelta a España joined the peloton and the big three coincide in the cycling calendar, there have been no no season without some Spanish victory. The meanest loot was collected in 1996, when Angel Edo saved the honor with a solitary triumph in Crotona, on the fifth day of the Giro d’Italia. Last year, not too generous, there were two, both in La Vuelta: Marc Soler and Ion Izagirre. This season continues with a clean sheet, when it is dangerously close to its end. There are eight days of competition left, eight opportunities to avoid full sterility and the dismal record.
And that La Vuelta started with a hopeful second place by Álex Aranburu in the initial time trial in Burgos. The Basque cyclist was one of the main candidates for wetting in the race, with various profiles that adapted to his qualities, but a fall sent him home. With other stage hunters with the gunpowder soaked or also withdrawn, in the case of Omar Fraile, who got off this Friday, and with Jon Aberasturi as the only sprinter, but far from the bullets of the race, the few options to break the drought point to a single corridor, Enric Mas, Until now, focused on a higher goal: the red jersey.
Pico Villuercas, one of the great discoveries of this edition, the port that has raised the most expectation after Gamoniteiru, stands this Saturday as a good opportunity for Enric Mas to conquer that long-awaited victory. Last Sunday, on the Balcón de Alicante, he was already powerful in hand in hand with Primoz Roglic. Also in the wall of Valdepeñas de Jaén, although there the percentages favored his rival more. It will be 14.7 kilometers at an average slope of 6.5%, with ramps that reach 15%. A colossus of Extremadura that is presented in society wanting to party. A good day to break the hex.
Villuercas will be the climax of the return of La Vuelta to the Extremadura community, which has not been present since 2013, when Michael Morkov won Cáceres. As an aperitif, Villanueva de la Serena, the town of José Manuel Calderón, a Spanish basketball legend, welcomed a massive arrival this Friday with surprising resolution. The Deceuninck marked an infernal train that fractured the platoon, but in the battle it also lost its leader, Fabio Jakobsen, who suffered a mechanical breakdown. The Dutchman encouraged by the earpiece to his regular pitcher, Florian Sénéchal, to finish the job. The 28-year-old Frenchman, this time a thrown pitcher, thus obtained the best victory of his life, in a hurried arrival with Matteo Trentin.
The stage will not go down in history for nothing else. In fact, this year we had already seen others very similar. The escape of the day repeated on Groundhog Day of all the flat days, with representation of the three invited teams: a Burgos-BH, a Caja Rural and a Euskaltel. Specifically: Diego Rubio, Álvaro Cuadros and Luis Ángel Maté. In these impossible adventures the full Spanish is more frequent. The only different moment was lived at 60 kilometers, when the squads without sprinters provoked a fan that caught the roosters off guard and surprised Egan Bernal, which was cut behind for twenty seconds. No one wound up the initiative, so the groups regrouped quickly. There was one more threat, also without consequences. The story has been postponed to Saturday. To the Villuercas Peak.