While the Vuelta a España brought a seventh summit finish in fourteen stages this Saturday, the Groupama-FDJ cycling team couldn’t make a significant impact on the race. After 136 kilometres of racing, Marc Soler was the sole survivor of the breakaway and won at La Farrapona. On Sunday, the second week of the Vuelta a España will come to an end with a fifteenth stage once again made for the attackers.
The day after the iconic Angliru, the riders of the Vuelta a España faced yet another summit finish on Saturday. This time, they were supposed to reach La Farrapona (17 km at 6%), in a stage where the difficulties were once again packed in the final fifty kilometres. At the start in Avilés, the fight for the breakaway began on slightly bumpy terrain, but it only lasted about fifteen kilometres. “Like every day, we planned to be at the front, and possibly to put a rouleur and a climber in the breakaway,” said Frédéric Guesdon. “It worked pretty well over the last few days. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do it today. The guys maybe didn’t have the best legs, but we also didn’t want to take the breakaway at any cost because Sunday’s stage suits us better. That’s perhaps also why we missed it. On top of that, the breakaway went early, and the guys maybe wanted to wait a bit more, when the terrain was more twisty and ideal.”
This is how a group of about twenty riders broke away from the peloton, without a rider from Groupama-FDJ, with just over 100 kilometres to go. The peloton gave the fugitives a lead of almost six minutes, but at the summit of La Farrapona, only Marc Soler was able to stay away from the favourites. “We got caught out a bit, but given how the stage unfolded, we have no regrets,” confided Frédéric. “Perhaps it wasn’t so bad, in the end, to stay in the wheels. It was then up to the guys to manage their day in order to be ready for tomorrow.” Stage 15, on Sunday, will still feature 3,000 metres of elevation gain, with a very demanding first half of the course. “We have more chances tomorrow than we had today or yesterday,” concluded Frédéric. “It won’t be easy though, with an uphill start that should be quite demanding. We hope to play a key role during the stage, but we’ll have to pay particular attention to what Mads Pedersen’s Lidl-Trek does.”
