One of the main question marks during the first week of the Vuelta a España has been Visma-Lease a Bike's lack of aggression on the mountain days, letting the breaks go on stages 6 and 7, and Jonas Vingegaard riding purely defensively, instead of his usual attacking style.
But the Dane confirmed after his second victory of the 2025 race and Visma's stunning lead-out that launched him to eventually arrive solo up to Valdezcaray that it was, in fact, his legs that were the issue, and that with a great feeling returning on stage 9, he couldn't help but attack.
It wasn't the initial plan as Visma drew it up on the bus, with the largely shallow 5%, 13.3km final climb not offering too much in the way of a potential solo attack, but when other teams had worked to bring back the five-man early breakaway, Vingegaard's instinct kicked in and he asked for a lead-out.
"It was more my own legs today that felt super good. Straight from the start of the stage, I felt great," said Vingegaard during his winner's press conference at the ski station.
"We still thought it would be a breakaway stage, but then only five guys committed to break, and we still didn't plan to use the whole team to pull, but then Trek and Q36.5 were pulling today.
"This morning, we said we wanted to ride defensively, so it was more my instinct. Then I asked if my team could launch me on the final climb, and Matteo [Jorgenson] just started sprinting fully committed, so I just kept going. It was amazing teamwork, and I'm super happy that I could finish it off. I couldn't have done it without them."
Once Vingegaard stormed into attack mode out of the peloton, Lidl-Trek's Giulio Ciccone was the only rider who initially followed, but just over a kilometre later, the Italian couldn't maintain the brutal pace and ended up losing 1:46 to the flying Dane.
Even still, Vingegaard wasn't sure he'd exactly calculated things right, being met by the rude awakening of the 10km to go banner as he and Ciccone got away, but he soon settled into his effort in the rain and held it all the way to the line for a 40th career victory.
"Maybe I didn't do my homework good enough, because I thought it was closer to the finish when I attacked," said Vingegaard in his flash interview.
"I was a bit surprised when I saw the 10km banner, but at that moment I had the gap and I had to keep going."
Even a charge behind from João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Tom Pidcock (Q36.5) couldn't bring him back, with Vingegaard eventually crossing the line with a 24-second advantage on that duo. He also closed the gap significantly to Torstein Træen (Bahrain-Victorious), who leads the race, with now just 37 seconds separating him from a third stint in the red jersey at this Vuelta.
"To be honest, today I felt a lot better than on the previous mountain stages, so that for me that was personally really nice," said Vingegaard.
"I haven't seen the file yet, so I don't know yet if it was one of my best days, but I definitely know it was not one of my worst days. I think it was a very good performance I did today, and I think I can be happy with it – the performance, but also the stage win – it's a nice way to finish the first week."
With much tougher climbs to L'Angliru (12.4km at 9.8%) and La Farrapona. Lagos de Somiedo (16.8km at 6%) to come in the second week, Vingegaard feeling back closer to his best is an ominous sign for his GC competitors, and he looks likely to all but wrap things up with some similarly impressive performances. His status as the pre-race favourite appears to be well intact.
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