It takes a hard man to win a hard race, and Jelle Wallays fit the bill perfectly on stage 6 at the Vuelta a San Juan on Saturday.
The 28-year-old Belgian, who is in his third year with Lotto Soudal, joined a 17-rider breakaway in the early going of the hot, windy 152.6km out-and-back stage, then outlasted his breakaway mates and outgunned the hard-charging peloton to take his first win since the 2016 Grand Prix Cerami.
The Argentinean race is Wallays' first since last year's Vuelta a España, a Grand Tour he raced for nearly all of the three weeks with two broken ribs and a broken wrist – although he didn't know the extent of his injuries at the time.
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"In the team time trial, the first stage, I did a very good job again," Wallays said of his 2017 Vuelta. "I crashed on the second stage, but I didn't want to give up because my condition was very good.
"On the second stage we came into the feed zone and there was a bottle coming in my front wheel and I crashed," he explained. "I did a control in the hospital, but there they saw nothing, so I went to Madrid [the finish] with a lot of pain. Then when I was in Belgium I went for a control with a doctor on the team, and the conclusion was I broke two ribs and I broke also my wrist. I did the Vuelta with two broken ribs and a wrist."
Ouch. It's easy to understand why the Spanish Grand Tour was Wallays' last race of the season. Now fully recovered, he is happy to make up for lost time and start his 2018 campaign with a win.
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