{"id":883856,"date":"2026-09-05T04:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T04:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/883856\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T04:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T04:20:11","slug":"skjelmose-accuses-olleagues-of-dirty-tactics-at-the-vuelta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/883856\/","title":{"rendered":"Skjelmose accuses olleagues of dirty tactics at the vuelta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mattias Skjelmose<\/a> had the best result among the general classification contenders<\/a> in the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a on Friday. The Dane from Lidl-Trek<\/a> slipped into the early breakaway and ultimately gained two minutes on his rivals<\/a>, but it wasn\u2019t without a struggle. Skjelmose gave his account of the race to the Danish network TV2<\/a> afterward.<\/p>\n

Skjelmose was part of a group of 45 and gained two minutes, putting him just behind fifth-place Oscar Onley and sixth-place Jakob Ormzel. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t the plan, but if you can get a free ride, you might as well take it,\u201d Skjelmose said, explaining that it wasn\u2019t exactly his intention to move up to the front.<\/p>\n

“At the bottom of the descent, there was a small obstacle that we hit hard, and it didn’t cost us anything. That’s when I was told they were trying to block the road behind us, so I figured I should go check out what was going on,” said Skjelmose. \u201cI had to expend as little energy as possible and see what I could get out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, the breakaway group split up, and Skjelmose found himself on the wrong side, alongside riders from Netcompany INEOS<\/a> and Bahrain Victorious<\/a>\u2014the teams of Onley and Ormzel. \u201cI think there were some who weren\u2019t too happy that I was there, and they resorted to some dirty tactics,\u201d said Skjelmose.<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"mattias-skjelmose\"\/<\/p>\n

Mattias Skjelmose is fed up with the behavior of some of his colleagues.<\/p>\n

Skjelmose didn’t start riding for his overall standing until the very end<\/p>\n

“I don’t think it would have turned out any differently. If I had been in the first group, a group would have set off without me anyway. INEOS and Bahrain were a little unhappy about it, but they could have just left if there had been a problem,” he recounts.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until the end that Skjelmose took the lead himself. \u201cI didn’t really take the lead until we got down to that flat section. I tried to make a couple of others\u2014Berthet and Rodriguez\u2014work as hard as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

“At any rate, I did my best, but as I understood it, it was INEOS that kept making suicide pulls back there. So it’s hard to gain much time. But I gained two minutes, and we can work with that,” the Dane concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mattias Skjelmose had the best result among the general classification contenders in the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a on Friday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[19035,49,48,635,10873,20987,252324,82,301174],"class_list":["post-883856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-bahrain-victorious","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-lidl-trek","tag-mattias-skjelmose","tag-netcompany-ineos","tag-sports","tag-vuelta-a-espana-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}