• 10th stage.Roglic flies and Nairo Quintana is shipwrecked in Pau's chrono
  • Movistar. Marc Soler Ears
  • Classification: This is the general of the Tour
  • Tour: All stages of the Tour of Spain 2019

Until yesterday, each favorite of this Tour made war on their own, with Quintana and Valverde maintaining a balance between safeguarding their options and not penalizing their partner's. As of now, there are only two sides left in liza. Or so it should be. On the one hand there is Primoz Roglic, the first authoritarian leader who enjoys this Tour after a week and a half with red cardboard-stone jerseys. On the other, the rest of the runners who aspire to win this race and now look further from being able to do so, a category shared by Alejandro Valverde, Miguel Ángel López and Nairo Quintana. The asterisk is loaded by the very young Tadej Pogacar, who since yesterday opened the doors of the fight on the podium if he is able to digest well the requirement of three weeks of race, a challenge he has never undergone .

Yesterday's time trial in Pau leaves Roglic in an ideal setting, with almost two minutes ahead of Valverde, second overall. The Slovenian, winner of the stage with 25 seconds over the New Zealander Bevin , would have signed it with blood, if they had given him the option to do so, even more after starting the Tour of the ground in the time trial by teams of the first day. There is half a race ahead, yes, but the feeling is that nobody can win the red jersey, that only he can lose it.

All assumed that the leader of the Jumbo, consummate specialist, silver in the World Cup two years ago, would put land in between in the time trial. But, except Valverde, which came out relatively airy, barely a minute and a half of ballast , everyone hoped to waste less time than they left. Lopez suffered the humiliation of being folded by the new leader practically on the finish line, giving up two minutes. Worse was still for Quintana, who left more than three minutes in one of his worst chronos ever and was about to be overtaken by Pogacar in general.

Faced with such a situation, it seems essential that the Superman Astana and Movistar are able to join forces in the stages of Asturias and the Central System to try to overthrow Roglic among all and then dispute among themselves the jackpot. They will do it? That is the reasonable doubt he plans on the platoon.

Among other things, because the Slovenian has brought to La Vuelta a team of authentic luxury to defend himself in the mountain stages, no matter how much he no longer has Kruijswijk with him. Nothing to do, for example, with La Vuelta that Aru swelled in 2015 to an orphan Dumoulin with the interested help of Majka, Purito, Chaves and Quintana himself in the mountains of Madrid. With Roglic it will not be so simple .

Valverde, fed up with the Movistar leadership debate

Every day, the same canteen. The debate over whether the leader of the Movistar is Valverde or Quintana is a recurring issue in this Tour, which is subject to revision practically after each stage. And yesterday the world champion, with the exquisite education that has always characterized him in his dealings with the media, said enough. Or, rather, he asked for a truce. «Sorry to tell you, but Nairo, the team and I are already tired of whether one is a leader or if the other ceases to be a leader. We are both going to do our best for Movistar and the final point, ”said the Murcia as soon as he finished his time trial. Quintana, meanwhile, assumed the difficulties of the new career scenario: "We have nothing to lose, we will have to be aggressive."

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  • Primoz Roglic
  • Nairo Quintana
  • Movistar
  • Fabio Aru
  • Alejandro Valverde
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