David Stanley
2024 Vuelta a España Week One Review
David Stanley is an experienced cycling writer. His work has appeared in Velo, Velo-news.com, Road, Peloton, and the late, lamented Bicycle Guide (my favorite all-time cycling magazine). Here's his Facebook page. He is also a highly regarded voice artist with many audiobooks to his credit, including McGann Publishing's The Story of the Tour de France and Cycling Heroes.
David L. Stanley
David L. Stanley's masterful telling of his bout with skin cancer Melanoma: It Started with a Freckle is available in print, Kindle eBook and audiobook versions, just click on the Amazon link on the right.
David L. Stanley writes:
I had a great lede for this rest day piece:
“Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
Inigo Montoya: Who are you? Man in Black: No one of consequence.
“Things got out of hand.”
In the pantheon of understatement, we’ve just added a new one. Yes, Mr. Patxi Vila, DS of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe-Sports (Hereafter referred to as RBBHS), you did let this one get out of hand. You screwed the pooch. You done messed up, A-A-Ron.
Patxi Vila
That lede was written after stage 6 when Ben O’Connor (Decathlon-Ag2r-La Mondiale) won with a brilliant move on a stage that started in a Carrefour Grocery. I even had a line about a rider tipping over during the roll-out so Bob Roll could say, “Clean up on Aisle 6, please.” BOC’s big ride boosted him to a 4:33 gap for the stage win. More importantly, he took out about 6:30 on the stage over the number 2 man on GC, Primoz Roglic (RBBHS) which gave him a near 5-minute GC lead. That was several days ago. Things change. More on that in a moment.
Ben O'Connor sitting up and enjoying his brilliant stage 6 win. ASO photo
I also had a sub-lede about Wout van Aert of Visma Lease-a-Bike (hereafter referred to as V-Lab) which I’ll leave intact:
Wout van Aert. At this writing, midway through Stage 8, Wout leads the points standing by a reasonable 41 points over Kaden Groves. He also has two stage wins, stages 3 and 7. How stage 7 came about is the compelling story. Sepp Kuss is the defending Vuelta champion. Yet with about 10 km to go on the road to Cordoba, Kuss once again became the Domestique Extraordinaire. He pulled the entire team up to an ultra-daring Marc Soler with 3.5 km to go. Once the peloton reformed for the sprint, Van Aert powered to victory ahead of Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) and Pau Miquel (Kern Pharma). Kuss displayed a massive amount of power on the flats, not the usual basis of his strength, as he reunited sprinter with breakaway rider and put his teammate in the position to win. Check out the photos. We all need someone in our life who shows us as much love as we see between Wout and Sepp. Take that, toxic masculinity. Men can hug in public. It’s okay. In fact, it’s recommended.
Wout van Aert in the green points jersey. Sirotti photo
João Almeida. I put João Almeida on the podium’s top step in Madrid for my preview piece. I was disappointed to see he lost 9 minutes yesterday. (I told you not to use my predictions as a betting scoop.) I was truly saddened, however, when I saw he was down for the count with a case of Covid. We’ll continue to see this a lot. As Prof. John Connor, a virologist at Boston University wrote:
Now, infection with SARS-CoV-2 is not novel. There is not an unexpected pressure on the healthcare system because of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Infection is still happening all the time. That marks it as endemic. The shift from pandemic to endemic is really marked by time and prevalence. The first SARS-CoV [virus] appeared in 2003 and now has not been seen for decades, so it was a pandemic, but never became endemic. SARS-CoV-2 seems like it is here to stay, right now. That makes it endemic.
João Almeida riding 2024 Tour de France stage 19. Sirotti photo
But I digress. Let’s talk about wildlife. Some years back, my family had a cabin in Michigan’s North Woods, the northwest corner, where your little finger would be in the Mitten, outside of Petoskey. Unbelievably gorgeous, rolling hills, old growth forests, lots of wildlife. I was out for my ride and had not seen but two cars in the first hour. I rolled down a hill at 30 mph, crossed a small bridge, hung a 30° right and slammed on my brakes. A flock, a rafter, a gang of wild turkeys were crossing the road. Dozens of them, as they took their sweet time, and one by one, two by two, they walked in front of me. As if it were a military parade, they gave me an “EYES RIGHT!” and marched along. I sat there for a good 3 minutes. If this had been a race (and road races are held on that road), the post-race BBQ would have featured smoked turkeys along with plenty of crashed and road-rashed riders at the dinner table. The turkeys did not care about humans. At all.
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Neither do deer. We’ve all seen fans invade the pitch, storm the court, tear down the goalposts. Ready yourself for “Deer Disrupt La Vuelta.” The incident occurred inside the final 20km of the stage to Cazorla. First, deer took down two riders. Since that wasn’t enough, another herd took out two bikes from the roof rack of a Basque team car in the race caravan.
“Txomin Juaristi suffered a fall at kilometre 140 due to the impact of a roe deer from a herd that was crossing the road,” said the Euskaltel-Euskadi squad report Saturday evening. “When he was being treated by the La Vuelta medical car, a second herd crossed again; and, in a third, another deer got caught in the roof rack of the second Euskaltel-Euskadi car and caused significant damage to two bicycles.” Juaristi hit the deck along with Guilio Ciccone of the Lidl-Trek team. That’s what happens when bike races invade the home on the range of the Spanish deer. Allegedly. Can’t find a link to any video. Can’t find any photos. You got ‘em? I’d like to see them.
Ibon Ruiz (front rider, Equipo Kern Pharma) and Txomin Juaristi (Euskaltel-Euskadi) on a break in stage 5
Back to Primoz. Thanks for hanging in there with me. When Primoz lost all that time to BOC, it was clear that the RBBHS DS was unsure of the situation. He didn’t want his guys to ride, and drag, the whole group closer to BOC. Yet, as the team most threatened, the unwritten rule is that responsibility fell on his RBBHS squad to take charge. Makes sense? Maybe. But doing nothing bit them hard on the day.
Primoz Roglic at the start of stage 5. Sirotti photo
Here’s another possibility. Send Vlasov on the attack. He’s strong, maybe one or two guys can match his attack. Five minutes later, send Roglic on the attack. Maybe one guy can go with him, he’s really flying this Vuelta. Now, you have a gang of 5 all dedicated to the chase group. Some want time. Some want the stage. All want to ride. They get up to BOC, or pretty darned close. Crisis averted.
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I’ll put some of this on Roglic, too. He’s won 4 Grand Tours. He knows better. When his group started to bleed time, he’s smart enough at reading the race to make the attack to keep the gap under control. He didn’t need a DS shouting “VENGA! VENGA! NAPAD! NAPAD!” in his ear to recognize the danger. (BTW – napad means attack in Slovenian, says Google translate. If you speak Slovenian and it’s wrong, hit me up on Threads.net @Dstan_58 and let me know, eh?)
Then again, a ticked off and relentless Roglic is a dangerous Roglic. His late stage 8 attacks were vicious and perfectly timed as he took back three-quarters of a minute on BOC when only Enric Mas (Movistar) was capable of keeping Primoz within his sight. Those attacks, they were the moves of a cold-blooded assassin, eh?
Enric Mas finishes stage 8. Sirotti photo
Stage 9 was the most exciting single day of stage racing this season. (Yes, there may be some recency bias.) Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) started the day 9:07 down in 27th place. He goes on the attack with 58 km to go and rides away from everyone on a seriously steep set of climbs to take the stage by 1:39 over Richard Carapaz (EF Education EasyPost). Yatesy boosted himself into 7th place, 5:30 back of BOC. He drops numerous F-bombs as he screams for water and ice to assuage his cramped legs. Who can blame him?
Adam Yates wins stage 9. ASO photo
As for Carapaz, he started the day 6:44 in arrears and in 18th place. He rode the last twenty km like a 4,000 meter pursuit to reach 3rd place at 4:32. Quite the ride for the Ecuadorian.
Richard Carapaz finsihes stage 9. Sirotti photo
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Meanwhile, Enric Mas started the day in 3rd place at 4:31. Near the end of the stage, Enric overcooked a downhill corner, high sides himself to the left, skids out to the right, fortuitously does all this at a gravel scenic turnout, and keeps the whole thing upright. Cooly, he rolls back onto the tarmac, resets his chain which bounced off in his kerfuffle, and finishes the descent on two tires that now have bald spots which resemble the top of Bjarne Riis’s head. After a change of shorts, he finds himself 3 seconds behind Carapaz in 4th place. No deer were harmed.
Meanwhile, back in the bunch, BOC calmly sprints ahead at the finish to grab a third place time bonus worth 4 seconds. Smart, you never know what the next 2 weeks might bring. Take the cannoli.
This Vuelta, with an extremely high technical degree of difficulty, will see the GC swing back and forth over the next two weeks. The heat has been suffocating, the climbs debilitating, the racing unpredictable and highly entertaining. You want to talk about the Vuelta, look me up on Threads.net. @DStan_58.
Nathan Dahlberg
On a sad note, the great New Zealander Nathan Dahlberg, a world class roadie turned mountaineer passed away on August 23rd at 59 while climbing in China. He rode several Tours de France and was close friends with 7-11 ace Scott McKinley. Scott wrote movingly about him on social media which was picked up by many news outlets, among them the New Zealand Herald. I did not know Nathan, but we have friends in common and they are all gutted by his death. Rest easy, Mr. Dahlberg.
David Stanley, like nearly all of us, has spent his life working and playing outdoors. He got a case of Melanoma as a result. Here's his telling of his beating that disease. And when you go out, please put on sunscreen.