Mikel Landa had to let go on the last climb of stage 18 at the Vuelta and eventually lost more than three minutes.
“It was difficult to help Landa in time,” Casper Pedersen said afterwards.
Landa got into trouble on the Puerto Herrera, a first category climb. The Spanish rider had no teammates with him and the ones who were in the early breakaway only dropped down very late. Pedersen was one of those men and explains what happened.
“We actually wanted to give Mattia Cattaneo the chance to go for the win today. He always does so much work for the team. This day was really for him.”
Cattaneo was also in the breakaway and was still in the front group in the final, but had to drop down at the last minute to help Landa.
“The plan actually went really well. But sometimes you have bad days. Landa was struggling and so we had to change our plans. A good situation suddenly became a bad situation, because we couldn’t help him quickly. It was difficult with the radio to hear what was really going on.”
“I did my work for Cattaneo first, that was plan one. After that I saved my legs to give it my all in the group with Landa. Vansevenant and Cattaneo were still a lot ahead and could only do their work later,” said Pedersen.
