"We're pretty good together" - Jay Vine pleased with his first week riding a Grand Tour alongside Tadej Poagacar

Jay Vine has a special relationship with Vuelta a Espana. Back in 2022, it was the race which discovered his potential with two stage victories in the first week. And last year, the Australian added two more to his collection while he also secured the 'King of the Mountains' jersey. His second in a row. None of those ambitions are really on the table this year though, as an even bigger fish that is Tadej Pogacar is present.

And as far as Vine himself is concerned, a role away from spotlight might be more comfortable in the current state of his season which has been first disrupted by a kangaroo in January, and later in a Giro d'Italia crash on the race's second stage.

"I'm happy with how my form's going, it's also really nice to be in a team with the red jersey already in week 1 and hopefully that continues throughout the race," Vine told Cyclingnews.

Racing in support of world champion Tadej Pogacar in any case remains a rather new experience for Jay Vine who, also because of his countless injuries, only ever lined up alongside the Slovenian in a handful of one-day races.

"Before here, I've only done this kind of work for Tadej in one-day races, but not in Grand Tours, and not stage races, either. I was supposed to do this with him in the Giro d'Italia a couple of years ago, but I sort of broke my neck in the Basque Country... But we've done Lombardia and Emilia a couple of times. We're pretty good together."

In the first week of the race, Vine already found himself useful to the Slovenian with local knowledge of the roads in Andorra during the fourth stage where he helped launch Pogacar towards his 50-kilometer solo.

"I know all the roads in Andorra, so I was able to guide him into the bottom of Beixalis [the climb where Pogacar launched his attack]. The goal was to be pretty much in the front and string it out from the beginning, so he doesn't get swamped in the first parts of climbs. Then we'd talked about how when they began sprinting in the 12, 13, 14% sections, I needed to get him onto the wheel so he could do his thing. It's one of those climbs when drafting doesn't matter, and sure enough after six minutes into the 15-minute effort, he was off solo."

There's still two more weeks to this year's Vuelta a Espana and Jay Vine, above all, hopes to complete the race in one piece while he steadily contributes to the growth of Tadej Pogacar's lead in the general classification.

"We get clear instructions from the briefing in the morning before the stage, then after that we go with what we're feeling on the road," Vine explained. "He doesn't need to speak to me on the radio, 'cos he's right there, riding right behind me. He's a pretty chill guy."