Luxembourg champion goes all out to take time in the mountains
Having ridden well, but fairly anonymously, so far in this year’s Vuelta, the biggest headlines around Saxo Bank’s Fränk Schleck were those around his younger brother Andy being sent home for going out drinking after dinner. Today that changed though, as the Luxembourg champion went on the offensive; he went first on the penultimate climb to the Alto de la Cobertoria, and then again at the base of the final climb up to the finish on the Alto de Cotobello.
“I tried to attack and I succeeded,” said Schleck after the stage. “Unfortunately there was one rider who remained ahead and he was too far to be caught. I would have liked the stage win but I’ve regained some time over all the other GC contenders, so it’s a positive day after all.”
Schleck is riding this year’s Vuelta to win, in order to salvage a season devastated by a crash on the cobbles of the third stage of the Tour de France, where he broke his collarbone in three places.
Yesterday he lost vital seconds to his rivals on the legendary climb to Lagos de Covadonga, today he went out to get some back.
“As everyone knows, yesterday wasn’t my best day due to the cold and rain,” Schleck explained, “so I really wanted to redeem myself, and I succeeded in showing everyone that I’m in great shape and I’m here to win. I’d rather try to attack and lose than [not] try at all and never win. I had great support from the team and Anders [Lund, his Danish teammate] was a great help encouraging me to go. Now, everything is possible.”
Schleck finished the stage in second place, just unable to catch stage winner Mikel Nieve (Euskaltel-Euskadi). More importantly though, he took vital seconds out of his main rivals in the overall classification; he rises from seventh to fourth, overtaking Nicolas Roche (AG2R-La Mondiale), Xavier Tondo (Cervélo TestTeam) and Peter Velits (HTC-Columbia).
Despite taking time from most of his rivals however, Schleck is still 1’23” behind Ezequiel Mosquera (Xacobeo-Galicia), on whom he only managed to gain 34 seconds. The podium is still a way off for Schleck: if wants to make it into the top three in Madrid this coming Sunday he needs to ride the time trial of his life on Wednesday, or repeat and better today’s attack on Saturday’s stage to the Bola del Mundo.