‘A very good day’ were the first words that UAE Team Emirates-XRG head of sport Joxean Fernández Matxin said to reporters as he stepped out of the team car in Andorra and just a few minutes after UAE’s Tadej Pogačar had clinched both a knock-out stage 4 win and considerably boosted his overall lead at the Vuelta a España.
Yet for all his evident, and logical, delight at having gained such a considerable advantage so early on, Matxin also issued some words of caution, too.
The race was only in its fourth stage, he pointed out, “less than half the way to the first rest day. We wouldn’t be showing respect to the Vuelta or to our rivals to say we had won it.”
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With such a decisive solo win, Matxin recognised “Tadej has made a big statement.” Yet he repeatedly underlined that the Vuelta was still at a very early point in the race, and that “There’s a long way to go, too.”
Matxin revealed that pre-race the main aim of the day, rather than taking time on GC, had been to go for the stage win, “and the best way to do that was not to let too big a break go or for them to get too big a gap.”
At the same time, too, even if it ended in the most predictable of fashions, in what was probably the most unexpected development of the day, Decathlon CMA CGM had attempted to open up the race early on. The French team laid down a ferocious pace on the upper slopes of the Envalira, the opening climb of the stage, and Gall’s attack on the Beixalis had acted as a springboard for Pogačar to make his own move.
“We wanted to try to go for it either on the Beixalis or on the Ordino. Then Decathlon tried their best to make an impact, and I have to congratulate them for having shown so much character; what they tried to do was very significant,” Matxin said.
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“When [Decathlon leader] Felix Gall attacked, that was practically the signal for Tadej to go for it alone.
“So it wasn’t like we made that decision to go for it then, it was more the circumstances that dictated that we do that at that point. After that, the results produced by those circumstances were what they were.
“The gap was just over 2:35 at the end, I think”- [2:39, Ed.] which is great. But there’s a long way to go, too, we’re only in the fourth stage.”
Time-wise, with an advantage of over three minutes already on his closest rival on GC, Pogačar has never had such a big gap so early on en route any of his previous six Grand Tour victories. But Matxin said more than statistics, “I’m interested in looking at the practical side of it all, seeing what we did today and what we can do tomorrow. Somebody said he’s now won 37 stages in Grand Tours, and that’s a really impressive number, but this was another stage to do what we could, as we could.
“Jay [Vine] laid down a strong pace, just as we planned, then Decathlon went for it and reacted.”
Matxin agreed with a smile that it was good to be back in Andorra where in 2019 Pogačar had taken his first ever stage win, because “that was how a great cyclist started in the Grand Tours. It was a very emotional victory.” But he warned, too, that it was never wise to get overly confident about reading too much into this latest victory.
“Look at the Tour and what happened to Jonas Vingegaard…He’s always been a key player in Tadej’s Tours, but there was a roundabout, a bend, and suddenly he’d fallen, and he was out of the game.
“We have to be respectful with the rivals and with the race, we haven’t even done the first four stages of the first week.
“We’ve got through today, we did really well and tomorrow we’ll try to go through the next stage. And that’s all there is to it.”
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