Mauro Schmid has no regrets about his late attack in Santander: "There is always a small chance, otherwise I wouldn’t have tried"

Mauro Schmid seems to be in the mood at this Vuelta a Espana. The Swiss champion is not afraid to show the beatiful national jersey at the front, even at the expense of vast amounts of energy. He wandered off to another such adventure in the final 1500 meters of the seventeenth stage with flat finish in Santander. The Jayco AlUla rider tried to upset the favourites on the wet roads, but his opponents were ready to counter. Thus Schmid will have to wait with his first Vuelta victory for another day.

"My legs were really good today, I wanted to be part of the initial breakaway but they didn’t let me go," he tells SpazioCiclismo after the stage. "Then in the last 50 kilometres I saw that many were suffering from the rain and the high speed, so the sprinters' trains weren’t very organised because they had to sacrifice a lot to catch up with the breakaway. I picked up speed and tried, I felt I had someone on my wheel so I went fast but not flat out to save some energy for the final sprint. In the end I got close."

Asked about the odds of such bold attack succeeding, Schmid is rather diplomatic: "There is always a small chance, otherwise I wouldn’t have tried. You have to be able to take a certain advantage right away, and I think I did it quite well. In the first corner I went well, but in the second I hesitated a little, but I’m still happy I tried."

Regardless of today's result, the 24-year-old Schmid is riding a great Grand Tour with fourth place on Manzaneda (stage 12) and runner-up behind Michael Woods the very next day on Puerto de Ancares. Tomorrow might the last big chance for Schmid to turn the tides, with one of the very few stages this year that can be tagged as 'hilly'. There'll be an opportunity to score a decent result in the time trial, but victory doesn't seem very likely there, nor in either of the two mountain-top finishes that are to come on Friday and Saturday.