One day before the rest day, and as one of the shortest stages in the Vuelta a España at 146.6-kilometers, stage ten was a feisty affair.

With the climbs coming early and again late, it was a stage that had breakaway written all over it, and Trek Factory Racing, with no overall classification to work toward, needed to be players in the day’s escape.

“On days like today the break can make it,” explained director Dirk Demol. “And for what we did today…yeah, I am not happy at all. Popo [Popovych] and Markel [Irizar] were covering a lot of breaks on the first 10-kilometer flat part, and when we started the first climb, then it’s up to our guys who can climb to be there. When a large group of 40 riders goes away and Riccardo [Zoidl] was the only one in that group…this was not good.”

“In this moment, for sure we didn’t panic because 40 riders never cooperates and maybe there will be a split again and things come back. So I told Riccardo to just hang in there, he doesn’t need to do anything, and then I was surprised that he was gone with a rider from Etixx-Quick Step and they kept going for a bit in the hope that a small group would come up to them, but it didn’t happen.”

Riccardo Zoidl and Carlos Verona (Etixx-Quick Step) gained 45 seconds on the rest of the large breakaway and still had 2 minutes and 15 seconds to the peloton, led by Giant-Alpecin.  But their move was short-lived as the 38-rider group clawed its way back to the pair while the peloton drew to within 1 minute and 15 seconds.

Demol continued: “So the 40 riders came back together again and Giant-Alpecin was chasing hard, and then for some reason eight riders were gapped from the front, including Riccardo, so there were 32 riders in the front and we had no one there anymore. So of course I made the team pull with Giant to bring it back.”

With the powerful engine of Markel Irizar helping pull, the peloton was back together with 55 kilometers to go. There were a few more fruitless attacks, but at the bottom of the final 7-kilometer climb with 24 kilometers to go it was one large bunch.

“In the end, we had the hope that it could be a peloton sprint and that Danny [van Poppel] could survive the last climb, but they went from the bottom really hard, and he didn’t make it over. So at the finish we only had Haimar [Zubeldia] and Fränk [Schleck ] in the front group – Riccardo ended up losing a lot of time.

“To be honest it did not go as we wanted today. The team has done very well the first nine days, but today, I have to say, we were not so good. Now the rest day tomorrow so we can regroup and come back ready to go for the next days.”

Kristian Sbaragli (MTN-Qhubeka) won the reduced bunch sprint and the top of the leaderboard remained at status quo.

After 10 days of hard racing, the peloton welcomes the first rest day tomorrow before the Vuelta heads into its second mountainous half.