VIDEO INTERVIEW | Mathias Vacek declares all-out offensive on McNulty's red jersey: "We want to go for it and see if we can take it"

It's taken only one stage of this year's Vuelta a Espana to have plenty of surprising results. Perhaps the biggest upset was the 22-year-old Czech Mathias Vacek who clocked better times than all the top-time trialists at the start. Only the penultimate rider on the road, Brandon McNulty was able to overcome the Lidl-Trek rider by two seconds.

Speaking to Cyclinguptodate, Vacek nodded that this might be the career-changing result, however there are still many other goals in this race. "Yeah, for sure. It's a massive step up to be one of the top riders out there. I need to fight also in the next stages and be as consistent as possible and fight for other stages and help the team to go for the GC and everything. I'm really looking forward to it."

Vacek already hinted that 2024 will be a decisive year for his future ambitions, showing himself strongly at Paris-Roubaix and later also at Tour de Hongrie and Tour of Norway, working for teammate Thibau Nys. Double top-15 result at the recently concluded Olympic Games only confirmed a good form of the Czech all-rounder.

Currently only two seconds shy of McNulty's red jersey, is it a goal to try and score some bonification seconds in the next two stages with expected opportunities for the fast men? "We'll see if it will be a bunch sprint or not tomorrow, but for sure, I will put me in the mix. Of course that the red jersey is so close, so we want to go for it and see if we can take it."

Lidl-Trek came mostly with ambitions for the general classification and thus thinking they'll throw everything at Vacek's provisional lead bid would be delusional. It'll be up to the Czech to take calculated risks on his own: "But also we don't want to take any risks in the first stages to crash out or something. That would be a shame."