"A mental victory for UAE" - Bruyneel and Martin on outcome of La Vuelta's team time-trial

The Vuelta a Espana's team time-trial provided a few seconds of difference but nothing excessive. The overall classification remained largely the same and the gaps were small to some teams that weren't expected to perform greatly. At the end of the day, Johan Bruyneel and Spencer Martin provided their opinions regarding the stage and also the first upcoming mountain clash in the Pyrenees.

"it's a status quo. It's not going to be a stage that will be decisive for the Vuelta overall win, but I think it's a mental victory for UAE," Bruyneel argued in The Move podcast. "It's been a while since they've won [a TTT]. I mean, at least, I mean, there's not that many team time trials anymore lately, but they're not super famous for winning team time trials".

UAE's victory didn't come as a complete surprise taking into consideration the quality of their lineup and also the fact that Team Visma | Lease a Bike were down a rider. "Visma I think in the end, in hindsight, you know, having to ride with seven riders instead of eight could probably cost them the victory and only eight seconds [...] The team who did better than I expected them to do. First example is Q36.5. They, they only lost like 20 something seconds, which is not that much. If you look at, you know, the composition of their team, small differences and yeah, and Jonas back in red..."

"We talked about it in yesterday's show, you know, the on purpose, he, he didn't want to hang onto the jersey, but now he's back into it. Knowing that now tomorrow we have a mountain stage, I don't think they're going to create a situation to give the jersey away again," the Belgian pundit argues. Howevet this difference is small, with only 8 seconds separating the Dane from the UAE trio of João Almeida, Juan Ayuso and Marc Soler.

But the real surprise is perhaps the proximity of many other top contenders for a Vuelta podium into stage 6, taking into consideration we've already had two hilly finales and a TTT. The lack of big crashes, unlike the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia, has kept most big figures unscathed and still within a chance of showing their form into the race's first decisive stages. This includes former race leader David Gaudu who will go into Andorra only 16 seconds behind Visma's Vingegaard.

"The thing that surprised me most about the stage was David go do yeah. Groupama-FDJ only loses 24 seconds. Pidcock loses 22. And then Decathlon loses 17. So that's like, those are not as big of a gaps as you would imagine. And then after this, there's only 27 kilometers of individual time trialing remaining (on stage 18, ed.), which means it's like, you know, what could you realistically pull out there?"

"Not a lot," Martin argues. "Which means we're probably going to have a really clustered tight GC battle, at least amongst the top, top guys through the rest of the race, bad news for people watching, that could create boring racing".

But the race will gain a new dimension this Thursday, and we could even see a new leader if Visma gives freedom to a breakaway, taking into consideration how we don't yet have big gaps in the peloton.

"It's difficult to predict the breakaway," Bruyneel adds. "I did. I mean, I did remember that I went up there once in Paul in the Tour de France. So I did some research and we did this same climb finishing climb in 1993 [...] Yeah. I looked at the results that there was not that big".

"I think this comes down to who beat who beats Jonas Vingegaard in an uphill finish," Martin responded. "And if it was harder, maybe nobody but this is not like and I always hate when people do this like 10-kilometer long at 6.5%. That's not that hard. But for these purposes for these guys like it will be a fast climb".