Blazin’ Saddles: 10 talking points from La Vuelta 2022 as Remco Evenepoel comes of age

In red from Stage 6 onwards, Remco Evenepoel’s only real threat came from himself in the form of that freak crash on the final descent in Stage 12. When he was dropped on the climbs, the Belgian showed maturity beyond his 22 years and stuck to his own tempo – limiting his losses on La Pandera and then all but securing the overall win a day later in Sierra Nevada.

On top of that, he demonstrated supreme time trialling prowess to win a maiden Grand Tour stage in Alicante, and then ruthlessness to win in red by denying Robert Gesink on the Alto del Piornal. Far bigger rivals will come than Enric Mas. Indeed, the prospect of seeing Evenepoel return to the Giro in this form, or to set his sights on a Tour debut next July, is mouth-watering.

To witness Evenepoel, Tadej Pogacar, Egan Bernal, Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert all on the same race will be a sight for sore eyes. Which is just as well, for moments after he won the Vuelta on Sunday, Evenepoel said it was his dream to win all three of cycling’s major races. Bring it on.

After Jai Hindley in the Giro and Jonas Vingegaard in the Tour, Remco Evenepoel became a first-time winner in the Vuelta. Unlike the others, it was his debut. But there was more significance behind this stat, for, crucially, both Bora-Hansgrohe and Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl became winners of a Grand Tour for the first long – breaking the Ineos-Jumbo-UAE triopoly that had established itself in recent years.

The days of domination by a single rider or single team seem to be well and truly over. While the likes of Bernal, Pogacar, Roglic, Vingegaard and Evenepoel have the attributes to become multiple winners of all Grand Tours, the fact that these riders are now all drinking from the same fountain will result in a sharing of the spoils. Others, too, may yet join the top table.

It's a wonderful era in which to be a cycling fan. But we may not see another five-time Tour winner in quite some time. Or, for that matter, another triple Vuelta winner like Roglic.

Truth be told, this wasn’t a very Vuelta-y edition of La Vuelta, lacking as it did the usual ‘rampas inhumanas’ that we have come to associate with the race over the past decade. In fact, there was good reason why an unproven 22-year-old was many people’s favourite for the red jersey way back in Utrecht ahead of the ‘gran salida’.

If ever there was going to be a Grand Tour for Evenepoel to get the ball rolling for his palmares, this was it. And once several of his challengers were ruled out with Covid, and then his main rival contrived to crash himself out at the very moment he was coming into some form, the odds were stacked in the Belgian’s favour.

Losing the likes of Simon Yates and Pavel Sivakov was a big blow to the GC battle, while the final-week showdown could well have been more intense had Primoz Roglic actually been there to take part. That’s not to say Evenepoel was not a worthy winner – he was, by a stretch, the best all-round performer over the three weeks – but would the result have been the same had this been a route featuring the Angliru, Lagos de Covadonga, Los Machucos or La Covatilla, or if some of the top-tier GC riders we see peaking around July put in an appearance?

We’ll never know. And, in a way, it doesn’t really matter. Grand Tours should be different, and the ultimate test should be to beat whoever turns up and over whatever terrain is included. But not even the most fervent of Remco fans could say this was a vintage edition of La Vuelta.

After 2018 and 2021, Enric Mas completed his hat-trick of bridesmaid’s finishes on La Vuelta, making him very much a modern-day Poulidor of the Iberian Peninsula. There’s no shame in being best of the rest on three occasions – but the fact that Mas has now been denied the top prize by three different riders (Simon Yates, Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel) suggests that his armoury is not one capable of reaching the top step of the podium.

For a long time, Mas was the younger statesman learning his trade. But once his elders Yates and Roglic were forced out of this race, Mas was beaten by a rider five years his junior and considerably more inexperienced. Holding the Spaniard back seems to be a lack of self-belief and explosiveness, and too much conservatism in approach.

But we shouldn’t be too judgemental on Mas. His caution and consistency are also his best tools, what puts him in the GC picture in the first place. It’s unlikely he will ever develop a killer instinct. But, who knows, it may, one day, pay off. Just not in a race where youthful attacking verve comes to the fore – and that seems to be the majority of races nowadays.

La Vuelta felt the loss of Primoz Roglic more than the Tour. In France, Jumbo-Visma had a ready-made replacement to step into the void – someone who could well have held the Slovenian back regardless. But once Roglic crashed out in Spain, so too did any realistic chance of Evenepoel being challenged. Mas and Movistar were unable to trouble the Belgian on the forgiving terrain, while the other top 10 contenders were already way too far down.

If everyone felt for Roglic after his latest set-back, few, if any, could have predicted the response from the outgoing champion and his Jumbo-Visma team. Three days had passed since Roglic’s entirely self-inflicted crash 100m from the finish in Tomares when Jumbo-Visma published an interview with the triple Vuelta champion in which he apportioned blame for the incident firmly at Fred Wright’s door.

Poor Wright was on his way to another near-miss – a second place at Talavera de la Reina to go with his two fourths and two thirds – when the news broke, forcing the 23-year-old and his Bahrain Victorious team to defend their position. Considering the accusations levelled at him, Wright was incredibly gracious and decent in his handling of the situation, praising Roglic’s achievements while voicing his disappointment at being subjected to “some pretty nasty comments”.

Quite what Jumbo-Visma and manager Roger Plugge thought they would achieve by making such tasteless and baseless claims – and to do so while dragging a young, popular and affable rider’s name through the dirt so publicly – is anyone’s guess. But the team and Roglic lost a lot of respect and the after-effects of this silly PR gaffe will reverberate for quite some time.

Alejandro Valverde and Vincenzo Nibali were given cycling’s answer to a guard of honour in Madrid ahead of the final stage, the peloton commemorating the careers of two riders who, between them, pretty much won it all. Together, they rode 59 Grand Tours in total – although few riders were more inconspicuous that the duo with the combined age of 79 in Spain.

If Nibali did get himself into a couple of breakaways towards the end of the race, Valverde was very much on domestique duty for team-mate and compatriot Mas for the three weeks. This Vuelta in general was not kind to the old guard, with less than a third of stages won by riders in their 30s.

Wins for Rigoberto Uran and Louis Meintjes aside, the past three weeks favoured youth over experience. Double winner Chris Froome had a race to forget, while the likes of Domenico Pozzivivo, Michael Woods, Thomas De Gendt, Daryl Impey, Luis Leon Sanchez, Mikel Landa and Esteban Chaves all had very little to write home about.

By contrast, half of the final top 10 also featured in the top five of the white jersey standings, with Evenepoel becoming the youngest winner since Angelico Soler in 1961, and Juan Ayuso, the youngest rider in the race, finishing third five days before his 20th birthday.

Should Mads Pedersen win a stage in next year’s Giro then he will surely make some kind of record in joining the select club of riders with stage wins in all three Grand Tours in less than a year. The 26-year-old Dane not only won three stages in Spain, but came second on four occasions and won the green jersey competition by a margin of 225 points.

The battle for green may well have been tighter had Sam Bennett not been forced out with Covid in the second week having already beaten Pedersen to two sprint wins in the Netherlands. Be that as it may, Bennett would have struggled to have beaten Pedersen on the days that the Dane did win – the Trek-Segafredo powerhouse proving himself to be one of the best in the business at winning reduced sprints after punchy climbs.

Of course, Pedersen will always struggle to replicate such dominance in a field that also includes the likes of Wout van Aert, Tadej Pogacar, Tom Pidcock and a fit Julian Alaphilippe. But that doesn’t alter the fact that Pedersen made this Vuelta his own in a season where he has been one of the outstanding performers across the board. It’s just a shame he’s not making the journey Down Under for the Worlds because he’d be one of the favourites to ride in the rainbow stripes next year.

On a race that actually offered quite a few opportunities for the sprinters, Pedersen ensured that the likes of Pascal Ackermann, Tim Merlier and Bryan Coquard all came out empty handed.

Very few riders can suffer knock-backs and then recalibrate themselves in the way that Richard Carapaz did in this Vuelta. The Ecuadorian Olympic champion clearly entered the race under-raced and short of form. But he recovered from plummeting out of the GC battle by winning three mountain stages and taking the polka dot jersey.

While he benefited from the sad withdrawal of Jay Vine, Carapaz certainly had the legs to have taken the KOM title from the Australian fair and square – given his consistency in the uphill finishes after Vine had already bagged his own brace of wins.

By winning Stage 20, Carapaz put the cherry on the cake and ensured that he was parting ways with Ineos Grenadiers on good terms and having delivered the best race he could have delivered in the circumstances.

Carapaz will be sorely missed at a team currently going through a transition of sorts. Once so dominant in Grand Tours, Ineos have reinvented themselves as a classics team of some force, with an exciting roster of young talent who can hunt stages and, perhaps one day, contest for pink, yellow and red.

But there’s no denying that Carapaz, for all his inconsistency, was a rider who was already doing just that. His departure to EF Education-EasyPost means Ineos have lost their most potent GC rider – and unless Egan Bernal returns to the top, the British team could well be without a genuine contender for quite some time.

Poor Joao Almeida: he left Quick-Step for more opportunities of being a leader at Grand Tours – then Juan Ayuso comes along, and he’s knocked down a peg at UAE Team Emirates, only to see former team-mate Remco Evenepoel win in his absence.

The Portuguese has had a frustrating first season at UAE – being forced out of the Giro because of Covid and then finishing fifth in his debut Vuelta but without really shining, save for an exciting yet ultimately fruitless cameo chasing down the break in Stage 18.

While Tadej Pogacar is around, Almeida will never get the nod in the Tour, so he needs to make things count in the other Grand Tours. What’s encouraging is that he has never finished below sixth in the three races he has completed – although it would take a big step up for him to make the podium. Perhaps the 24-year-old would have been better off staying at Quick-Step after all.

The Australian crashing out of the race in Stage 18 provided the race with one of its saddest sights. Vine, who made a name for himself – and won a pro contract – by winning Zwift Academy during the lockdown, took things to the next level with two stellar mountaintop stage wins in the opening half of the race.

In doing so, Vine became the latest in a long line of cyclists to have made career breakthroughs by winning two stages on the Vuelta, following in the tyre tracks of compatriot Michael Storer (2021), Frenchmen David Gaudu (2020) and Warren Barguil (2013), the American Ben King (2018) and Poland’s Tomarsz Marczynski (2017).

Now Vine needs to ensure that that brace does not become the pinnacle of his career – as with King and Marczynzki – but a stepping-stone to greater things. Given the way he rode and his commanding hold on the polka dot jersey when he crashed out, a Tour debut next year for Deceuninck-Alpecin should not be out of the question.