Short but extremely hilly, stage 7 of La Vuelta proved to be a very tough one for the riders. While the future Groupama-FDJ’s rider Michael Storer took the win from a breakaway, Rudy Molard finished a little after the GC favourites. Arnaud Démare and his lead-out men also made it to the end of this tiring day, already looking to Saturday’s potential sprint.
According to Rudy Molard himself, the first real “hard day” of the Vuelta was supposed to happen on Friday, with a “roller-coaster” kind of stage to Balcón de Alicante. The riders got to the heart of the matter right from the start as the Puerto de la Llacuna (1st category) featured after only seven kilometres. As everyone could imagine, loads of moves then occurred but the nine kilometres of climbing did not prove enough to create a breakaway, while the gruppetto was already formed in the back. “Today’s goal really was to get into the breakaway,” said Rudy Molard. “Unfortunately, I did not succeed. At the top of the first climb, we were down to 25-30 riders in front. It was not so difficult to enter it then, but unfortunately I was unable to go with the six man-group. Then a small peloton came from the back, the race lit up again, a group of about 20 went and I missed it too. It’s my fault though. I was in the back, waiting for water at the car because I hadn’t had anything to drink for a while and I was really thirsty. I couldn’t even join in the battle for this big group. I felt I had decent legs today, so it’s a shame to miss it, but there will be other chances.”
“The riders suffered a lot from the heat”, Franck Pineau
From then on, the former red jersey “just” followed the wheels of the main group as the strongest from the breakaway went to fight for victory. The latter eventually went to a future team member, Australia’s Michael Storer. Alongside the GC contenders until the last three kilometres, Rudy Molard finally took 35th place on the line, moving up to twentieth overall. All of his teammates arrived 20 minutes or so later in the gruppetto. “This was a very hard day”, said Franck Pineau. “It went super fast, we started with a climb and there were 3,500 meters of elevation. That’s a lot for 152 kilometers. On top of that, it was very hot today and the riders suffered a lot from it. Jacopo struggled with the heat, went through a tough moment, but he recovered in the end. We gave them a lot of bidons and they drank a lot. In the end, we safely brought our riders back to their destination. It was important to enter the time limit, and they did it without a problem in a big group”. “It was a super hard day,” said Rudy Molard. “The tempo was always high, and there was almost no break”. Tomorrow, the team’s riders will face another challenge as stage 8 is expected to end with a mass sprint. “We’re going to do everything we can to make a good sprint with Nono [Arnaud Démare],” promised Franck.
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