If Archie Ryan is suffering from any nerves associated with making his Grand Tour debut at La Vuelta, the 23-year-old Irishman is hiding it very well. He went on the attack again today, as the race headed towards a big summit finish on stage 9, just three days after his stage 6 escapade.
Ryan (EF Education-EasyPost) made the breakaway of the day, which went clear after about an hour of racing. And though it had some strong riders, the tactics behind in the peloton very much worked against them.
The start of the stage - 195.5km from Alfaro to Estación de Esquí de Valdezcaray - was marked by plenty of aggression but the general classication teams were very closely policing who was going up the road, leading to many failed attempts.
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However, when the first decisive move was made, Ryan was in it, with just Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos Grenadiers) for company initially. They got away across the top of a small uncategorised climb and were joined on the descent by three more.
Michel Heßmann (Movistar), Kevin Vermaerke (Picnic PostNL) and Liam Slock (Lotto) made it five up front. And though they settled in to try and open a gap before the cat 1 summit finish climb, they never got their advantage above three minutes.
The fact the stage featured no categorised climbs, apart from the final ascent, really worked against them. It meant Lidl Trek, in particular, were able to keep most of their riders in play, including the non-climbers.
The breakaway's efforts were really undermined by the efforts of Lidl Trek to catch them before the intermediate sprint, for Mads Pedersen, with 29km to go. Though the breakaway stayed away to contest the sprint, the gap was just below 1:20 at that point. And with the final climb to come, that was never going to be enough.
At that point, with the 13km final climb just up the road, Lidl Trek had help in the chase, with Bahrain Victorious and Q36.5 also pulling, for race leader Torstein Træen and Tom Pidcock respectively.
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Kwiatkowski and Ryan proved the strongest, and most determined, of the breakaway men to keep the move going. However, when Ryan was recaptured with just over 12km to go, that was the end for him and the breakaway men; the Irishman having spent 136km off the front.
On the final ascent, Matteo Jorgenson made much of the running on the early slopes, going so hard he pulled clear his team leader, Jonas Vingegaard and Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek). However, with about 10km to go, Vingegaard dropped the Italian and rode his way to a solo victory.
Behind him, João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates XRG) set about trying to close down the flying Dane, blowing apart the select group. Only Pidcock and Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) were able to follow, though Gall was soon dropped.
Vingegaard didn't open the kind of gap one might have expected - with his advantage over Almeida and Pidcock at around 30 seconds - but he still cruised to victory. He took his second stage win of the race by 24 seconds, with Pidcock 2nd and Almeida 3rd. Gall hung on for 4th, but was 1:02 down.
Race leader Træen finished in 17th place, at 1:46, at the back of the 12-strong general classification group unable to live with the strongest men who went forward on the final climb. As a result, Træen keeps the leader's jersey going into tomorrow's rest day.
Eddie Dunbar (Team Jayco AlUla) finished in 37th place today, at 4:54. He has had a low-key opening week to the race, though he is expected to go on the attack in the days ahead. For his part, once Ryan was caught he sat up and rode to the finish, crossing the line in 133rd, at 18:39.
