Romain Bardet battles to 9th on final mountain stage

The last day over the climbs at the Vuelta saw a large breakaway go clear after a fierce start, with Romain Bardet battling to ninth place in the finale; yet another top ten result for Team dsm-firmenich.

Rolling out from Manzanares El Real on Saturday afternoon, over 4000 metres of altitude gain spread across 207 kilometres of racing awaited the peloton. As expected it was an explosive start to the day with 80 percent of the peloton looking to make the break. Carrying some wounds from yesterday’s unfortunate crash, the Team dsm-firmenich squad covered as many moves as was possible, before Bardet eventually made it into the group of 31 that went clear.

With the pace going out of the peloton, it was soon clear that the large breakaway would go on to fight it out for the win. Yet, despite a few probing attacks at around 60 kilometres to go; the climbs weren’t sharp enough to create separation and it became a race of attrition, with riders slowly dropping out from the group. Around 20 riders, included Bardet, made their way onto the last climb where there were steep ramps and strong attacks were made. Bardet gave his all and tried to follow but just missed the split over the top, where the gap then quickly expanded. Coming home in the chasing group, he got up to sprint for ninth place; taking another good result for the team at the Vuelta.

Bardet said: “It was a really hard day. It was also not easy to manage with such a big break in the front. I came a bit short on the last climb in the end. On the top of the climb I missed a few seconds to make the front group and wasn’t able to come back. I just missed a little bit. After a such hard day on the bike the result is a bit disappointing but I also gave it my best shot and didn’t hold anything back.”

Team dsm-firmenich coach Phil West expressed: “We had the plan to be in the main move. It was a really hard, horrible start so we knew it would be tough. In the end we only had Romain in there but fair play to the rest of the guys, they went as hard as possible at that moment to try and get in. With Romain in the big group it was bout coming through the stage in a good way. The climbs weren’t as hard gradients wise as it looked on the profiles, so we just looked at the teams that had numbers to make the pressure, and went for the fight on the final climb. In the end he just didn’t have the punch to stay in the wheel in the last kilometre on the climb, so was in the chasing group. It was then a fight to the line and another top ten, which is good, and a nice team effort once again.”