"In the first half hour of the stage, I was really suffering" - Wout Van Aert admits that sometimes his legs feel "human" too

Wout Van Aert showed monstrous performance on Tuesday to with the tenth stage of Vuelta a Espana. With three victories and a comfortable lead in the points classification, the Visma | Lease a Bike rider took a seemingly day off on Wednesday to finish 12 minutes back.

However the Belgian assures that he didn't exactly gift the stage win to the breakaway, reportedly feeling some side effects after his efforts day earlier: "It was not a giveaway, it was just not having the legs. In the first half hour of the stage, I was really suffering. I felt the effort from yesterday. Today, I was counting down the time," he confessed to press after the stage.

Van Aert's teammates took up the challenge instead, however unable to repeat the Belgian's success. "It was really nice to see Attila [Valter] and Stevie [Kruijswijk] making the jump to the front group. Obviously, I was hoping for great results for them. I don’t know how it exactly ended, but it was a good try from them."

Tomorrow's stage uphill finish in Montaña de Manzaneda normally isn't something for the Belgian all-rounder, however with one of the riders dubbed as 'aliens', you never know.