‘A minimum effort for maximum benefits’ – UAE Team Emirates-XRG manager looks on Jonas Vingegaard’s ascent of Blockhaus with mix of admiration and frustration

As Matxin viewed it, Visma-Lease a Bike played things very cleverly strategically, with Vingegaard finishing it off faultlessly.

“He let his teammates do all the hard work much more than half-way up the climb, then he made his move. He rode it exactly as he wanted.

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“If he goes on taking out 20 seconds on [rival Giulio] Pellizzari every day on a summit finish, it’ll quickly add up.

“To be honest, on the Blockhaus he took more time than I thought was actually possible. A minute on a key opponent like Pellizzari? That’s more than any of us expected.”

“Ok, Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) held on better than we thought, but a minute on his most direct rival is far more time than normal in a first mountain stage and above all on a stage with just one climb at the end like on Friday.”

Gall was perhaps the most surprising rider on the Blockhaus in some ways, holding Vingegaard to 13 seconds by the summit, but Matxin did not feel it was utterly unexpected by any means. That said, he also pointed to various dents in the Austrian’s armour as perhaps limiting his GC options in some of the stages to come.

“He’s always been very consistent, but in many cases, stages like today [stage 8 over the muri of Tirreno-Adriatico], if they go for it on GC, he isn’t always that well-placed and he’s not as good a bike handler as Vingegaard, [Giulio] Ciccone or Pellizzari. So on the more nervous stages, he pays for that” Matxin argued.

“But in tests of absolute climbing strength, a classic stage with a long, draining ascent of the kind we get in the UAE Tour, say, where there’s a process of natural selection of the strongest, he’s always on it. In those types of ascents, he’s one of the five top best riders in the world.”

Felix Gall on the Blockhaus (Image credit: Luca Bettini / Getty Images)

When it comes to stage racing, though, Vingegaard can operate on another level regardless of the circumstances or the terrain. And on the Blockhaus, Matxin says, the ultra-versatile Dane was in his element once again.

“Jonas always knows when to wait for the right moment, he showed that yesterday. He went for it at five kilometres to open up a gap, he saw that Pellizzari was on his wheel, then kept going at his own pace, and Pellizzari blew.

“He races very intelligently, he knows how to use his energy perfectly. It was really brilliant.”

Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates – XRG) near the front of the group on stage 1 of the Giro d’Italia (Image credit: Dario Belingheri / Getty Images)

It’s logical, though, that even after an amazing series of triumphs for UAE Team Emirates-XRG in the Giro – three wins in eight days – Matxin’s thoughts are as much, if not more, with the riders that have had to abandon as they are with those still on the race.

“Vine, in particular, needs us to show him how much we believe in him, because he took a big blow on the physical side, but even more on the mental side,” Matxin said.

“He’s ridden three races this year, in the first [in the Tour Down Under], a kangaroo fell on top of him and he had to abandon, then ten riders fell ahead of him in Catalunya and he crashed through no fault of his own again, and then in the Giro, one of our own riders came down and brought Jay down with him.”

“He’s worked so hard to get so little reward, after all that effort he’d put in, the sacrifices he’d made and his family too…we know he’s crashed a lot in the past, but he’s been really working on it, we’ve been working on his descending in training camps.”

“But when people fall right in front of you, there’s not much anybody can do. So we have to work hard with him, show our belief in him, because he was definitely a candidate for the time trial here and more.”

Adam Yates, meanwhile, is still very angry at having had to abandon, Matxin said, because his latest climbing data suggested that he could have been up there in the GC fight on the Blockhaus.

There has been some encouraging news from the UAE sick bay though. Soler – who fractured his pelvis and needed a medicalised flight home from Sofia as he was immobilised after his accident – has started walking with crutches and unaided for the first time on Friday. The Catalan allrounder made it on foot as far as the local doctor’s surgery for some blood tests, Matxin said.

On the plus side for the squad, UAE Team Emirates have done extraordinarily well in the Giro since then, winning multiple stages with Jhonatan Narvaéz and one with Igor Arrieta. But as Matxin says, that doesn’t mean they forget the riders who through no fault of their own are no longer able to be present.

“It’s a real pity, and we’re giving them absolutely all the support we can,” he said. “They don’t deserve anything less.”