At the start of the second week of the race, O’Connor led Roglič by 3:53 in the GC standings with Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) in third at 4:32, and Enric Mas (Movistar) 3 seconds further back in fourth. The Slovenian then took 37 seconds from O’Connor on Wednesday’s stage 11, which was won in a rousing finish by Jayco AlUla’s Eddie Dunbar who registered the first Grand Tour stage victory of his career. At that point, O’Connor’s lead was down to 3:16 with Mas in third now at 3:58.
Stage 13 featured a difficult summit finish on the Puerto de Ancares (7.5 km @9%, with ramps up to 20% on the final 2.5 km) where Roglič struck again, riding with Mas to drop O’Connor and then riding away from the Spaniard with 2.3 km to go in the stage. The Canadian climber Michael Woods (Israel–Premier Tech) won the stage and Roglič reduced his deficit to O’Connor to 1:21 with Mas sitting third, 3:01 behind the red jersey.
As he has been doing throughout this race, after that stage, Roglič complained about his sore back, the result of a crash in the Tour de France, when he broke a vertebra and abandoned the race. “It’s nice to gain something,” he said. “It’s nice to go good. But I feel it.”
The second week climaxed with yet another summit finish – and what a finish it was. The climb of the Cuitu Negru (18.9 km @ 7.1%, with an average of 13.4% on the final 2.7 km and a ramp of 24%) promised fireworks and more than delivered. Led by his impressive young teammate Florian Lipowitz, Roglič made his move when the going got tough on that ascent, riding away from O’Connor and a small group of GC contenders.
Ahead of him, another teammate, Aleksandr Vlasov, was battling with Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates) and Pablo Castrillo (Kern Pharma) in a dense fog for a famous stage win. Castrillo, who won stage 12 by grimacing and bobbing and weaving like a boxer on the bike, rode away with about 1 km to go, in his now famous style, and seemed to be on his way to another Vuelta stage win.
But suddenly Vlasov loomed out of the fog and, visibly in the red, rode up to his back wheel with 830 m left to ride. But cheered on by a highly partisan Spanish crowd, Castrillo found more reserves when his tank appeared to be empty, and beat Vlasov to the line by 12 seconds That gave his second-level team its second Grand Tour stage victory, both by a rider who was largely unknown until last Thursday and is now the toast, not only of Spain but of the entire cycling world.
“When Vlasov came in, I took a little rest, I took a little breath, and once again, I decided to speed up and I did it,” Castrillo said. He is the first Spanish rider to win two stages on a Vuelta since Alberto Contador did it ten years ago.
In the meantime, Roglič had ridden away from Lipowitz and appeared to be on his way to another dominant mountain-stage performance and to the race leader’s red jersey. But the climb was hard and, as Roglič himself said, “It’s been a tough week.” Mas suddenly rode up and passed him with 1.3 km to go and the three-time Vuelta winner had to work to catch up to Mas just before the finish. And gained another 38 seconds on O’Connor.
He then trailed the Australian by only 43 seconds, with Mas in third at 2:23. After the stage, he apparently thought that he had lost time to the race leader, perhaps due to the fog. “I don’t know how much we lose, actually,” he told Eurosport. “The red jersey, he was in front?”
Then, on being erroneously told he had gained 15 seconds on O’Connor and not 38, he said, “A good performance. It was a tough day today. Still better to win something, than to lose 15, no? I’m very happy.”
He should be. Though he wasn’t at his best on Sunday’s stage 15, he was good enough. But his happiness didn’t last long because he was informed not long after that interview that he had been penalized 20 seconds for spending too much time riding in the slipstream of the team car after stopping to change his bike.
However, that shouldn’t have an impact on the final results. After the rest day on Monday comes a week of many high mountains where Roglič usually shines and O’Connor doesn’t, and the race ends with an ITT, in which none of the other GC rivals can come close to him.
