Roglic, on the left, and Carapaz, in the middle of a fight in the ascent to Moncalvillo.Kiko Huesca / EFE
It's my birthday and with Vuelta on TV, the never seen, says Julio Jiménez, who turns 86 and suffered on Sunday seeing Roglic freeze in the freezing rain of Formigal that soaks all his clothes, and the climber from Ávila wonders, three times king of the Tour mountain and second overall in '67, if today's cyclists don't ask the director for brandy on cold days, as he asked Geminiani in the Giro and snowfall stages, which only They suspended when the snow reached the pedals of the bicycle, and Julio rejoices, always happy, seeing that its October 28 is not cold in La Rioja, that it is sunny and the color of autumn shines in the harvested tempranillo hawks , and that the climbers are preparing to give him a show like the ones he offered at the Puy de Dôme, for example, against Federico Bahamontes ahead of Anquetil and Poulidor, already dead.
And ascending towards the Moncalvillo pine forest, 1,492 meters, that another Jiménez, from Ávila, Chava, crazier than Julio, more peculiar and a lover of the show, crowned first in a Tour of Rioja in 1994, Roglic is no longer cold, nor is he Carapaz, both of them, the two strongest in the Vuelta, are fiery like the color of the beech leaves in the valley, and, in the last kilometers, crossing the Canadian pass that scares the cattle, they fight like little children who are they take a few races, to see who gets to that tree first, you don't catch me, and so on, and they have so much fun with that return to their childhood, which deep down is a return to the origin of competitive sport, to the years of brandy in the jerrycans, who do not allow themselves not to spend it all, wasteful, who do not think about the next day.
And to everyone, to them, to the fans, it seems that this simplicity of hand-to-hand is the most extraordinary, and it is the rarest.
Roglic beats Carapaz by a few seconds, and the Ecuadorian continues to lead by almost nothing, by 13s.
And when they talk later they both say that they had a great time and that they are very happy with how things have gone.
"I did not know the arrival, nor did I come out with a clear idea, but going up I told myself that I wanted to win and I decided to take my feelings, without reflecting or calculating," says Roglic, who has already won two stages in the Vuelta after his failed Tour .
"Thus, with the best fighting every day, the races are much more fun for us cyclists and also for the spectators," Carapaz accompanies.
And the two also declare that this would have been impossible if there had not been a team like Movistar that also wants each stage to be a fight, that the Autumn 20 Vuelta continues to be a race without truce every day.
In the first port of the day, that of La Rasa, the wind blows and those of José Luis Arrieta's team —Arcas, Erviti, Verona, Rojas, Oliveira— accelerate and accelerate and end up in two kicks with the escape of the secondaries, and Still no secondary has been able to have a role that is not silent in the film, and, incidentally, they make everyone reach the foot of Moncalvillo with their tongues, where Valverde lights the first firecracker, the appetizer of the total explosion that should star his partner and leader, Enric Mas, who knows the climb very well and believes that it is going super.
But when the strongest rivals come into action — first Carthy, the Englishman who preferred to come to Caja Rural a few years ago rather than fall into the hands of Sky, launched by Woods;
then Dan Martin, the Irishman who won't budge— But he can't hold his speed.
He takes refuge in his rhythm.
Limit the loss.
He waits for better days while he watches the podium recede (he is fifth now, 1m 54s from Carapaz, 1m 10s from fourth, Carthy. “But the chained passes will be better for me, you'll see”, he promises.
And his team, for sure, will not lose the desire to continue fighting.
That's what his director, Arrieta, says, and in his head future duels with Ineos, the team led by his friend Zandio and led by runners, Carapaz, Amador, who he also taught to compete, are bubbling in his mind.