Remco Evenepoel hoping for cooperation to ‘work against’ Jumbo-Visma leaders at Vuelta a Espana

Remco Evenepoel is hopeful of getting support from other riders to “work against” Jumbo-Visma’s three-pronged attack at the Vuelta a Espana.

Jumbo-Visma’s Sepp Kuss leads the way in the GC standings at the first rest day, holding an advantage of two minutes and 22 seconds over defending champion Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step).

Three-time winner Primoz Roglic and Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard (both Jumbo-Visma) are not far behind in the standings.

With Soudal-Quick Step unable to provide the same level of support to their leader as Jumbo-Visma can to their top challengers, Evenepoel hopes other riders can come to his aid.

“Of course it’s always a bit more easy to work together than solve all the problems yourself.

“The Jumbo guys are three so we have to find a way how we can work somehow against them, even though it’s not easy because they’re all super strong.

“Of course it’s not easy to ride against three strong climbers, good Grand Tour racers. For me it’s not an easy task to always come up with different plans to try and beat them, especially when they work well together like they’re doing now.

“But I think that’s something we knew already before the Vuelta so we have to deal with it and try to manage the situation in a good way.

“We’ll have to see day by day and then see how the ranking will be after tomorrow, and then also especially after stage 13 and 14. But I think it’s not a lie that it would be a good thing to try to work together.”

The race resumes on Tuesday with a 25.8km individual time trial.

There are then big mountain stages ahead which should show which of the GC contenders are the strongest.

Even though Kuss currently leads the way in the standings, Evenepoel does not view him as a leading favourite.

“Sepp is considered one of the best climbers in the world, but we already saw him getting in some trouble on the last two mountain stages.

“So personally I consider him more as an outsider, especially from the Jumbo team. I think they will still go for Jonas and Primoz.”

Evenepoel also added that he can’t pick out one name as his main rival.

“If you look at the top favourites for the moment, I’m first,” he said.

“So it’s still difficult to say who is above one another because we’re all really close to each other for the moment, and there have already been some difficult stages. So it’s difficult to really say one name [as a main threat].”