Blazin' Saddles: Movistar and Ineos Grenadiers could yet stop Primoz Roglic winning third Vuelta

In any usual year, lauding Movistar as the most likely team to reignite interest into the dwindling leadership battle of a Grand Tour would perhaps be seen as satire or a poor joke. But in this Vuelta, the Spanish team really do appear to be the last viable obstacle standing between Primoz Roglic and a runaway third successive Vuelta a Espana crown.

Until Friday, Movistar had three riders in the top four, with Señores Mas, Lopez and Valverde all tantalisingly clustered within 41 seconds of the red summit – validation, finally, for functionality of their oft-maligned trident leadership structure.

That veteran Alejandro Valverde crashed out in such grim and poignant circumstances on Friday’s stage to Balcon de Alicante was a big blow for the Spanish team. But, to seek a silver lining, the 41-year-old was the most expendable of Movistar’s trio – even if he possessed the kind of unpredictable do-or-die characteristics the team may sorely miss in their next assault on putting the brakes on what increasingly appears to be Roglic’s race to lose. At the very least, Valverde’s departure simplifies things and concentrates the focus of the task in hand.

Any casual first-time observer of Sunday’s stage to the Alto de Velefique may have concluded a couple of things: that the leader of the Vuelta wears white and that, despite all their hard work, Ineos Grenadiers were unable to set up their man Egan Bernal for the win.

It was, indeed, curious to see the British team do so much work for so little gain; no gain, at all, really. Curious, perhaps, but becoming something of a habit. We saw it at the Tour, and here we have it again: Ineos committing, expending energy, burning all their matches – all while giving their rival, the man in red, an armchair ride along with his best uphill lieutenants.

It’s as if the team ride each mountain stage thinking they have the strongest rider in the race, only to realise three-quarters the way through that they don’t even have the race’s fifth-best rider. Some critics on social media over the weekend suggested that Ineos, with their misfiring triple leadership dynamic of Bernal, Adam Yates and Richard Carapaz, had even become ‘the new Movistar’.

Understandably so. In 2019, Movistar’s trident of Nairo Quintana, Mikel Landa and Valverde all made the top 10 of the Tour without any of them looking remotely good for a podium finish. This year, it was the turn of new recruit Lopez to be a blunt prong of the Tour trident alongside Valverde and Mas, the latter’s sixth place finish in Paris all the team had to show for their (many) troubles.

That the past two seasons chez Movistar have been documented so well by Netflix has only enhanced the team’s synonymity with tactical cluelessness, bungling stratagems and in-fighting. So, it’s ironic that the year they seem to be finally getting something right – at least in the Vuelta, that is – the cameras have stopped rolling, the streaming platform having criminally axed the third season of The Least Expected Day.

Instead, Ineos have picked up the Movistar baton. Bernal, the race’s best young rider and winner of the Giro back in May, tried his best after Sunday’s stage – where he conceded 1:05 to Roglic – to explain his team’s confounding tactics: "We started this morning with that attitude, to go all out for everything and force the pace in the race as much we could.

"It was a crazy fast race in the first hour, then our idea was to push hard on the long climb and stretch things out on the last one as well. That was the plan, but there were other riders who were very strong. So, we have to turn the page on that chapter and move on."

Never mind new chapters. While Roglic and his main mountain lieutenant Sepp Kuss are clearly reading from the same page, Bernal, Yates and Carapaz aren’t even consulting the same self-help manual. Ineos arrived with a philosophy of letting the road decide and on Sunday, once the likes of Dylan Van Baarle, Pavel Sivakov and Jhonatan Narvaez paved the way, their leaders all rode their own races – and they all conceded time.

Bernal is 1:52 down, Yates 2:07 adrift and the Olympic champion Carapaz a whopping 10:57 off the pace having plummeted out of the top 20. If their trident has become a two-pronged plastic fork, then at least the team will have the Ecuadorian rider to use as a picnic rug going forward.

This could arguably put Ineos in a better place than their Spanish counterparts at Movistar, who no longer have Valverde to play the destructive role now designated to Carapaz. What’s more, Movistar also lost their Swiss debutant Johan Jacobs to a nasty crash on Sunday, reducing the team to just six riders.

One figure who formerly plied his trade for both Sky and Movistar is the Basque climber Mikel Landa who himself finds himself out of the GC picture on the first rest day. Landa already lost a handful of seconds on the Montana de Cullera on Thursday, then dropped three places out of the top 10 at Balcon de Alicante on Friday. On Sunday, his dwindling chances all but extinguished while his Bahrain Victorious teammate Damiano Caruso was soloing to glory further up the road.

Landa is now sixteenth overall almost six minutes in arrears, with his three lieutenants – Jack Haig, Caruso and Gino Mader – all ahead of him. In this respect, Landa has become the mere handle of his own team’s new trident, with Australia’s Haig fourth at 1:42, Swiss climber Mader twelfth at 4:00 and Italian veteran Caruso – runner-up at the Giro after Landa crashed out – 12 seconds ahead of the Spaniard on GC.

The upshot of all this is that Roglic looks exceedingly comfortable in the red jersey – even if his gap over the two Movistar riders in his rear-view mirror is minor. It remains to be seen if either the dogged Mas (+28) or the solid Lopez (+1:21) is prepared to jeopardise his own chances while strengthening the other’s – it would be unlikely – or if Movistar, in time-old tradition, will passively accept the bottom two rungs of the podium and, with it, snare the team classification prize.

Much can still change in a Grand Tour which, lest we forget, is not yet halfway through. Roglic’s lead is more commanding that his margin suggests but the GC picture entering the first rest day is nothing like that of the Tour, where his compatriot Tadej Pogacar held a five-minute advantage over his nearest genuine challenger.

Any big changes are likely to come not next week, but in the final week, with the extra kilometres in the legs ahead of three tough mountain slogs and the all-important final time trial in Santiago de Compostela.

Before then we have Stage 10, a 189km largely flat schlep pretty much entirely along the south coast save for the final climb (11km at 5%) before the finish. The 133.6km Stage 11 is potentially hilly ambush territory, albeit with just one categorised climb, although the ramped finale hits a mind-boggling 20% in the last kilometre.

Then we have two days where it should be more about green than red, with Fabio Jakobsen and Jasper Philipsen both vying to complete their hat-tricks while picking up as many points as possible for the maillot verde competition. Although Stage 12 features two categorised climbs – including the misleadingly named Alto del 14%, with its average gradient of 5.6% – the organisers expect a bunch sprint in Cordoba. The largely flat 203.7km Stage 13 plays out over exposed roads susceptible to crosswinds and could result in the penultimate bunch sprint of this Vuelta.

After four days the first GC summit of the second phase comes on Saturday’s fourteenth stage, although the toughest climb – a 2.8km concrete road that peaks at 20% – comes too far away from the finish for it to be a factor, while the final climb, the Pico Villuercas, is long but rather forgiving. Stage 15 features four categorised climbs along the 197.5km route, but none of these tests average above 5.5% and the finish at El Barraco is on the flat around 5km from the last summit.

Crashes and unforeseen circumstances aside, then, there should be little change in the state of play between the first and second rest days, such is the benign nature of the route this year, heavily loaded as it is towards the final week. Oddly enough, this may actually play into the hands of the likes of Bernal, Haig and Lopez – who all appear to be coming into this race a little undercooked as they battle back from either fatigue or injury.

The absence of uphill gimmickry or shop-stopper summit finishes will allow this trio, along with the promising Yates (still finding his groove in his first Grand Tour for Ineos), to get back up to speed and hit their stride ahead of the final week fireworks. Make no mistake: rampant Roglic remains the favourite. But who’s to say that we’ve yet to see the best from his opponents?

By having two cards to play, Ineos and Movistar could well ask some probing questions of Jumbo-Visma – provided they get their tactics right and don’t shy away from making key leadership decisions. Bahrain, too, could have been liberated by Landa’s demise – with Haig ghosting into the top five with a cluster of strong climbers in support.

Movistar’s Mas-Lopez combo are better poised that the Yates-Bernal duo at Ineos, but while one could have hit its peak, the other may still have something to offer. The British team also have the Carapaz card to play, with a solid support cast of strong climbers. What they can’t do, though, is continue riding as if white were red: their outmoded train tactics are just playing into the hands of Jumbo-Visma while making them look like Movistar Mark II.

1. Roglic, 2. Mas, 3. Yates, 4. Bernal, 5. Haig, 6. Lopez, 7. Kuss, 8. Ciccone, 9. Vlasov, 10. De la Cruz.