Gijs Leemreize climbs to 6th after attacking ride in Vuelta breakaway

With confidence amongst the team high after Wednesday’s sprint success with Pavel Bittner, Team dsm-firmenich PostNL once again set about animating a stage that on paper looked perfect for the breakaway. However, due to its nature and every team wanting to be in the move, then the racing was hard from the flag drops with lots of attacks. The team tried to get multiple riders in the move but only got Gijs Leemreize in an initial large group of 33. However, some teams closed things down a bit and on the opening categorised climb Max Poole launched an attack and bridged across. Yet, the peloton also wasn’t happy with the composition of that move and once again shut things down.

Eventually the race winning break went clear, with Leemreize once again representing Team dsm-firmenich PostNL out front but this time in a group of 13. Working well initially to extend their gap, the cooperation in the group began to dwindle and things became tactical, with Leemreize managing to forge on with eventual stage winner O’Connor at around 50 kilometres to go. The duo worked well together and coming onto the penultimate climb they held an almost 50 second advantage over a chasing trio, but towards the top O’Connor upped the pace once more and Leemreize had to let go of the wheels, riding his own pace. Continuing to push to the line, Leemreize cruelly just missed out on a stage podium spot in the final few hundred metres, with the group behind catching him.

Leemreize said: “Everyone knew that today was a potential breakaway day, so it was full gas racing from the beginning. The others did a good job following the moves. At one point I jumped with two others and a big group came across. On the first climb Max also jumped across with some other strong climbers, but the peloton closed the gap. Towards the top I jumped again and this time it was the definitive break. When the cooperation in the group got less, I managed to get a gap with O’Connor. He was to strong, so in the end I had to fight for second. In the end the chasing group just caught me before the line, so I had to settle for sixth.”

Team dsm-firmenich PostNL coach Phil West added: “We started with the goal to try and search for an opportunity with the breakaway and ideally get in a move with a couple of guys from us. It proved every bit the scramble we thought it might. We did end up in the front group with Max and Gijs, but I think that group was too big and in the end it got rode down by the bunch. The break that did go, then really went at a bit of a random moment. It wasn’t the outcome we were hoping for and we aimed to have more guys in the move to play our options. Fortunately, we had Gijs in there at that point, and he was able to go late and deep into the final and take a solid sixth place. It also looks like Max is starting to recover from his crash so hopefully he continues in a good way before the next mountains. In general, we have some good points to take from today but also things for us to work on as the Vuelta goes on if we want to keep in the fight for results.”