Lennert Van Eetvelt suffers considerable time loss at the end of first racing block: "Tomorrow is the rest day and I’m looking forward to that"

Lennert Van Eetvelt has lost his place in the top 10 of the general classification in the Vuelta. In the tough mountain stage to Granada, the leader of Lotto Dstny had to drop out of the favorites group early and eventually crossed the finish line almost four minutes after the large favorites group, losing positions in both general and youth classifications.

"I felt at the start that I didn’t have the best legs, I knew it was going to be tough," said Van Eetvelt in an initial reaction shortly after the finish. "I think I wasn’t the only one. I did lose a lot of time, but I fought against myself. I couldn’t do more."

On the final climb, Van Eetvelt lost contact with the group of favourites, and the gap continued to grow in the descent to Granada with a hard time finding cooperation in his group. "I didn’t feel super good and I had the feeling that I had found my rhythm, but that turned out not to be the case. That’s a shame, because the team did a super good job. But tomorrow is the rest day and I’m looking forward to that," he laughs.

At the very least, there was no crash able to stop Van Eetvelt today. "Woods fell in front of me and I had to avoid him. I didn’t crash myself, but I had to put my foot down and was out of the race for a while, but afterwards it wasn’t a problem," he explains.

The battle for the white jersey is now also somewhat less impotant for Van Eetvelt as he loses quite a lot of ground in the general classification, falling down all the way to 15th overall. "It depends on how the coming weeks go, I hope I can find my form again."