Esteban Chaves’ refrain during this opening week of the Vuelta a España has been a simple one. “Increíble,” the Colombian tends to say at regular intervals in his post-stage press conferences, with a smile and a disbelieving shake of his head.
After landing his second stage victory of the race at Sierra de Cazorla on Thursday and reclaiming the leader’s red jersey in the process, Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) noted that Chaves is becoming a credible general classification threat in the longer term, though he and his Orica-GreenEdge team seem determined to live resolutely in the now.
“We’ll just enjoy today and see what happens over the three weeks,” directeur sportif Neil Stephens said while Chaves clambered onto the podium to accept the day’s spoils. “I don’t know what to expect from him – I didn’t expect anything from him today and look what he did.”
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The carpe diem philosophy is not limited to management. Chaves revealed afterwards that it was his teammate Mat Hayman who instructed him to go for broke on Thursday’s third category climb to the finish, just 24 hours on from losing the red jersey when the race split in the finishing straight in Alcalá de Guadaíra.
“In the middle of the stage I spoke with Mat Hayman and he said that if I had good legs at the end I should try for the win, because you never know what might happen tomorrow,” Chaves said.
At the Caminito del Rey on Sunday, the diminutive Chaves had bounced across to the leaders and then promptly deposited one Nairo Quintana (Movistar) out the back on the steepest section of the climb.
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