La Vuelta 2022: ‘I hope today was my bad day’ – Remco Evenepoel concedes final climb was ‘harder than expected’

Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) admits the final climb of Stage 14 at La Vuelta was harder than he expected as the red jersey hopes he has had his bad day.

Roglic is now 1’49” behind Evenepoel going into Stage 15 which has another summit finish.

“I decided to control the damage a bit because was a pretty hard final, much harder than I expected those final 3kms,” said Evenepoel after the stage.

“The wind was also very annoying, it was like a cross-tail on the climb so it was really not easy to follow in the wheel.

“When he went off I knew I couldn’t follow him because I was quite fast. So I just tried to keep up with my own pace.

“I think I paced my own [pace] a bit too fast in the start, then after that I lost a bit of time in the next kilometre and then I could control it to like 40-50 seconds.

“I hope today was my bad day so I’ve got to not lose my head, keep the focus and fight back tomorrow.”

It was the first sign of weakness from Evenepoel, who took the red jersey after Stage 6, in this race but he says there are no concerns on his side ahead of Sunday.

“It’s my second day after the crash so maybe I didn’t have the best feeling in my body,” continued Evenepoel.

“I didn’t have the legs like I did last week on the steep slopes. I had a bad moment for two or three minutes then the final 2km was ok.

“Nothing really big to worry about, I just hope I recover and have fresh legs for tomorrow.”

He added: “Tomorrow is a completely different finish. The opposite of today.

“We will be going much higher so for sure so there will be more benefit to sit in the wheel.”

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