09/05/2023 | Marek Matějka, photo Sirotti
Filippo Ganna avenged Remco Evenepoel’s world championship defeat by winning the Spanish Vuelta’s time trial in Valladolid. The world champion did not do as well as he imagined before the start, he only managed 20 seconds on Primož Roglič and did not threaten the race leader Sepp Kuss.
Ganna put in a perfect performance, averaging 56km/h in the 25.8km time trial and when he crossed the finish line he beat the previous leader Stefan Bissegger (EF Education-EasyPost) by 1 minute and 19 seconds. Ganna was supremely the fastest in all split times, the only one who threatened him at least a little was the world champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step), who started slowly, but gradually accelerated and at the finish line he was 16 seconds worse than the Italian champion.
Evenepoel was not satisfied with the result, not only did he miss the stage victory, but he also imagined a bigger lead over Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma). The Slovenian was even a second faster in the first split, but later he lost something, specifically he was 20 seconds worse. However, he beat teammate Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) by a large margin, for whom the time trial did not suit him at all, in 10th place he lost 1:18 to Gann, 1:02 to Evenepoel and 42 seconds to Roglič.
Vingegaard was also beaten by other overall favorites, the third best leader behind Evenepoel and Roglic was Joao Almeida (UAE Emirates), the Portuguese champion lost 50 seconds to Ganna and 34 seconds to Evenepoel and he must be satisfied. Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hangrohe) surprised, who was only 2 seconds worse than Almeida. Juan Ayuso (UAE Emirates) fell a little short of expectations. The young Spaniard lost 1:11 to Ganna and 55 seconds to Evenepoel.
In the end, no one really threatened the red jersey of Sepp Kuss (Jumbo-Visma), but the American lost more than half of his lead over Evenepoel, he was 1:13 worse. He could also worry about the second man Marco Soler (UAE Emirates), who set a good time, but only beat Kuss by 17 seconds.
27 seconds for Evenepoel
The overall standings haven’t changed much, but the time gaps have changed. Kuss leads by 26 seconds over Soler and 1:09 over Evenepoel. The most important thing for the Belgian is the distance from the competitors behind him. Roglič loses 1:36 to Kuss and 27 seconds to Evenepoel. Almeida got ahead of Vingegaard, Ayus and Enrico Mas (Movistar) and after ten stages he is 2:16 behind the race leader and 1:07 behind Evenepoel.
2023-09-05 16:11:46
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