Mikel Landa limited himself to two words before turning around atop the Alto de Puig Llorença and descending to the Astana team bus after losing almost a quarter of an hour on stage 9 of the Vuelta a España: “Mal día.” Bad day.
The Basque was among the fallers in a crash midway through the stage, fought out in searing temperatures on the Costa Blanca, though neither he nor his team offered the incident as an excuse for his tame showing on the second category 1 summit finish of this Vuelta.
“Fortunately he only picked up a few scratches in the crash, nothing worrying,” Astana directeur sportif Stefano Zanini told Cyclingnews in Valencia on Monday morning. “Nothing in particular happened beyond the crash; it just wasn’t a good day for him, nothing more than that.”
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So then there was one. Astana arrived in Marbella with no fewer than three contenders for the final podium in Madrid, in the shape of Landa, Vincenzo Nibali and Fabio Aru. Following Nibali’s expulsion for taking a tow from a team car on stage 2 and Landa’s travails on Sunday, any lingering leadership debate at Astana has been quietly dismissed. Aru, the man tacitly atop the hierarchy from the outset, is now the undisputed leader.
“We came here with big expectations, with three important riders. Obviously we lost Vincenzo straight away, but even after that, we still had Aru and Landa,” Zanini said. “Now the situation is what it is, Landa’s lost ground. Still, we’ll continue as before, and the whole team will be around Aru, including Landa. But Landa is still an important rider for us, and he could even have freedom on a few days to try for a stage win.”
As the Vuelta breaks for its first rest day in Andorra on Tuesday, Aru lies in fifth place overall, 1:13 behind race leader Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) and just ahead of pre-race favourites Chris Froome (Sky), Nairo Quintana and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar).
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