Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe lost control in the sixth stage of the Vuelta even if they sent Florian Lipowitz into the day’s breakaway to keep Ben O’Connor at bay, but it didn’t go quite as planned.
“I had super good legs. I’m happy with my form, but I could have gone for more today,” said Lipowitz. “But unfortunately we missed Ben’s attack. After that everyone looked at each other. That wasn’t perfect for us, but there are still many stages to come.”
Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe Sports Director Patxi Vila admitted things went in a way they didn’t anticipated.
“Things got out of hand,” said Vila. “Things didn’t play out as we wanted. The start was really fast-moving and the break of the day was a really strong one. Lipo was in there, and we thought he would have no problem staying with Ben and we’d get another option on GC”.
“What O’Connor did was incredible, I’ve rarely seen that,” Vila said. “Going up the last climb he just didn’t lose any time. I would never have expected that it’s a real surprise.
“The idea was that Lipo’s presence in the break would get the other teams working, because they wouldn’t like us getting another rider up there on GC. But then with O’Connor being so much stronger than I thought, it all got out of hand.”
