On the day when Fabian Cancellara left the Vuelta a Espana to prepare for the World Championships, Trek again tried hard to win the stage. Despite a strong attack from Jesse Sergent, the team failed to join the early breakaway.

The Vuelta a España heads into its last days and the opportunity to play for a stage win is wide open as the GC contenders focus on the race for the final podium.  Deep into a Grand Tour the gaps in the lower rungs of the general classification are enormous, allowing two races to form each day – the fight for stage victory, usually from a non-threatening breakaway, and the battle for the overall classification.

The 157-kilometer stage 18 was an occasion for two races again, but a reluctant peloton chased down a few big moves that went clear in the early going, including one with Jesse Sergent.  He jumped with eight other men, a break, it seemed, with potential, but the move was pegged back. So were a few others that followed.

“It was super fast start today, and I don’t really know why," Sergent said. "I was towards the front and I said to myself that I would go with the very first attack, and if it goes [then] good, and if it doesn’t, I will think about the next days. And it kind of went – they shut the road down [behind] and we got about 30 seconds, and then Lotto and Sky started chasing. We were out for around 30k.

"Initially we thought we were gone, and normally it goes out quickly from 30 seconds to over a minute, to two, to three.  But it did not happen. We heard on the radio that Lotto was chasing so we began pulling full gas hoping that we could bring it out a bit more and they would give up. They never did.

"After [we were caught] it was constant attacking, groups going away, groups coming back, for over an hour I think.  It finally went on a little climb, three guys, but Movistar controlled – I guess they wanted to do something with Valverde.”

It was not until a blistering 60 kilometers had been covered that three men were granted freedom from the peloton’s grasp, but with limited power to fuel the escape it was mission impossible.  When the race hit the final climb -  the category two Alto Monte Castrove (7kms at 7%), which was ascended twice, the last time for the finish - the breakaway was easily nullified and the race became one again. 

The last time up Monte Castrove was played to the tune of the GC rivals. The stage victory went to Fabio Aru (Astana) with Chris Froome taking second and also moving to second place in the overall.  Alejandro Valverde came across the line in third, also dropping to third place overall.  Alberto Contador easily maintained his comfortable margin in the overall lead.

With the opportunity to fight for a stage win today never materializing, Trek Factory Racing next looks to stage 19 tomorrow where they will try again. Today they were ready to play ball, but sometimes all you can do is obey the rubrics of the peloton’s game.

“It’s always hard to say when a break will go but I had a bit of a feeling that the first break could today, and they would let it go if it were the right guys," Sergent said. "And it was the right guys - we were all probably three hours down [on GC].  Maybe tomorrow will be the same thing – there are a lot of teams searching for results here, and we are running out of days, so it is making for racing like [we saw today].”

Fabian Cancellara did not take the start today as he begins to fine-tune his preparations for the World Championships in Ponferrada, Spain in just over a week’s time.