‘My legs were almost too good’ – Fred Wright gutted after another near-miss at La Vuelta 2022

Fred Wright’s wait for a breakthrough win goes on after another near-miss on Stage 5 at La Vuelta, with the Brit claiming his legs were “almost too good” as he bemoaned his poor luck.

Wright (Bahrain Victorious) was part of an 18-strong breakaway on the run from Irun to Bilbao, with the group later joined by Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) before being slowly whittled down as the stage progressed.

With the day certain to go to the break, he later looked best-placed to take a first Grand Tour victory when two chase groups came together and had lone escapee Soler in their sights in the final kilometre.

To compound Wright’s misery, he missed out on the leader’s red jersey as fellow escape act Rudy Molard (Groupama-FDJ) pipped him to the GC lead by two seconds.

“I was feeling strong but I’m disappointed. I was just too marked, I needed good legs but the legs were almost too good,” admitted Wright.

“Ah! I don’t know, I’ll look at it again and see what I did wrong. We just should have caught him, plain and simple. But it just didn’t happen.”

Asked why the chasers did not cooperate, he continued: “It’s just bike racing. It’s just a shame that I’m just close again – close to that win again. But it’s good legs for the rest of the Vuelta for sure. I’m sure there’ll be better days.”

Wright was also informed during his press duties that it was Molard who had grabbed red.

“I needed to win the stage to get the red. Ah, it’s a shame but I tried. I don’t really know what more I could have done. I was working with him, I still had a good sprint at the end considering I led the whole thing out, everyone was just looking at me. What can you do?”

‘He will obviously be frustrated’ – The Breakaway

Eurosport experts Adam Blythe and Dan Lloyd dissected Wright’s misfortune on The Breakaway – and the former said he could have played the finale differently.

“I don’t think he quite wanted to attack and I think if he just sat back, tried to distance himself as much as possible from Molard, and then tried to hit him, rather than trying to keep everyone rolling through [taking a turn], that was his only option I think. It never happened,” said Blythe.

“That’s so easy for me to say sitting here, being critical of an amazing ride by Fred, who was obviously the strongest in that group by far.”

Wright put in a series of impressive performances at the Tour de France earlier this summer but also came out with nothing to show for his efforts.

“He will obviously be getting more frustrated,” added Lloyd.

“When you come close at the Tour de France at the age that he is, you sort of think ‘well, I probably didn’t even expect to be in this position at this point in my career.’

“But a few weeks later at the Vuelta and he gets himself in a good position, this is the point where he will start to think: ‘I’ve got to try and do something different because I’m putting myself in these positions to win all the time and I’ve not yet managed to take that win’.

“It can’t be far away.”

Wright’s consolation prize was the young rider’s white jersey, which he grabbed from compatriot Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers).

– – –