Vuelta a Espana "still all to play for" Jai Hindley thinks after surviving first mountain stage

The first mountain stage of the Vuelta a Espana proved to be a very difficult one, with the heavy rain and fog making it a very complicated affair to many riders, but to the GC contenders it was another obstacle to tackle. Jai Hindley has made it through in the main chasing group.

"The team did a great job looking after the GC guys. Then it started raining pretty heavily, which made the day very hard. There was a really hard tempo on the penultimate climb, and it didn't stop on the final climb either," Hindley said in a post-race interview. The Giro winner is in Spain with similar ambitions and will have to wait for the high mountains to put some serious damage. However, he's shown good legs in the first summit finish, finishing aside Primoz Roglic and several other GC contenders - as did his teammate Wilco Kelderman, whilst Sergio Higuita shed 20 seconds to the group.

"We were unfortunately not able to follow the decisive move, they were just too strong today," he said of Evenepoel's attack. Hindley was within the riders capable of following the first acceleration, but could not follow the second. However, despite time lost to some contenders, it was a day where some lost their possibility of fighting for the red jersey, but BORA - hansgrohe kept it's three cards in the game.

"But in the end, we still had our riders right up there in the GC group. There are still a lot of climbing stages to come, so it's still all to play for, I think," he concluded. The summit finishes at Colláu Fancuaya and Les Praeres are set to see further differences in the coming days.