‘Every team seemed to have same plan and start was mental’

Wednesday, August 29, Stage 4: Granada to Roquetas de Mar (188km)

LAST night my BMC team stayed in a smashing hotel in Granada. Also there were the Education First – Drapac squad, which contains my good friend Simon Clarke. Simon and I were neighbours when I lived in Baresi in Italy a few years ago and having started out as training partners then, we remain good friends ever since.

Simon broke his shoulder at Milan San Remo in March and I haven’t raced since the Giro in May so while we’ve texted and kept in touch all season, we haven’t met up with each other for a couple of months so after dinner last night we sat out in the lobby for a while and had a chat.

After catching up with everything from home, our attention inevitably turned to the Vuelta.

Simon told me he wanted to get in the breakaway today but wasn’t sure his team would not let him as he might have to stay with his team leader on such a tough lumpy stage.

As it turned out, Simon wasn’t the only one interested in getting up the road this morning.

In fact, the theme of our pre-stage team talk was basically ‘let’s get in the breakaway’.

Demma (Alessandro De Marchi) was really keen to get up the road this morning, so we decided to try and help him do that, which proved a lot harder than we thought.

Every team in the race seemed to have the same plan and the start was absolutely mental, with non-stop attacks taking the average speed to 50kph in the first hour of racing on an anything-but-flat stage.

Demma eventually got into a seven-man move which then was joined by more and more little groups until a 25-man escape group merged up the road on the first climb, the third-category Alto de la Origiva.

Between guys attacking off the front and guys getting shelled out the back, there were only about 30 or 40 riders left in the bunch at the top, after 55km.

With every team, apart from Quickstep and Sky, represented in the breakaway group, it was left to the race leader’s team to take up the chase at the head of the peloton.

French escapee Rudi Molard had started the day just four minutes down on race leader Michal Kwiatkowski, but Sky kept them on a leash of around three minutes for a long time.

It looked like they had things under control until the breakaways began attacking each other from about 80km out, Demma being one of the main instigators.

As we climbed further back the road, the breakaway group kept splitting up and regrouping in various shapes and sizes and our directeur sportif behind the break was constantly in our earpieces.

Up ahead, Demma was busy trying to get rid of as many hangerson as possible before the final climb but there was so much information coming that it got to the point where I just took my earpiece out.

“Go Demma, you’re with three guys.”

“40 seconds... chase group one minute.”

“Group back together.” “Peloton five minutes.”

WORRYING

I was too busy just trying to get through my day in the peloton, without worrying about what was going on up front.

I put it back in with about 50km to go when I knew we were getting close to the last climb.

By then Demma was clear with Simon and Dutchman Bauke Mollema.

Their advantage was six minutes, with Molard in between, and riding himself into the race lead.

The break were very strong today, so maybe Sky decided it wasn’t worth using too many riders to defend the jersey and possibly have nobody left when we go back into the bigger mountains later on.

To keep the jersey they’d have had to use another couple of riders a lot earlier in the stage so I think they just decided to limit their losses and make sure Molard didn’t get ten minutes.

Demma tried to get rid of his two companions on the run-in to the finish but had to be content with third on the stage as Simon took victory into Roquetas de Mar. Vuelta a Espana,

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