A breakaway that survived an uphill finish
That almost never happens. Andreas Leknessund won stage 7 of the Vuelta on Friday, alone at the summit of Aramon Valdelinares after 149.8 kilometres from Vall d’Alba and the best part of four hours in the mountains.
Uno-X Mobility got a one-two out of it. Tobias Halland Johannessen came in 34 seconds down on his team-mate. Wout van Aert took third at 47 seconds.
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Pogacar loses ground and keeps the jersey anyway
Tadej Pogacar came off the wheel in the closing kilometres of the climb. He then did the work himself, dragging the favourites’ group to the line to keep the damage down, and finished 19th on the stage at 4’23. The red jersey stays where it was.
The top of the general classification barely moved. Enric Mas is still second at 3’50 for Movistar, Primoz Roglic third with Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. Having taken the last Tour de France, Pogacar is chasing a Grand Tour sequence nobody has put together in years.
A day Uno-X will remember
Two riders in the first two places on a Grand Tour mountain stage is a serious return for a Norwegian outfit of that size. Leknessund is 27 and had spent the season more or less invisible. He needed this.
Van Aert keeps arriving without landing anything. He was in the move again on Friday and simply did not have the legs on the steeper ramps to go with the two Norwegians.
The line to watch is Pogacar’s. A crack appeared, small, on a climb that never really suited him, and gaps opened behind him among the outsiders. Whether Friday was a flat day or the first sign of something else is a question for next week.
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