Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
The incredible Tadej Pogacar has made it a hat-trick of stage wins in the first week of La Vuelta a Espana — but for once, it wasn’t such an easy victory as the Slovenian maestro had to overcome a rare slip before prevailing.
Pogacar survived a scare when, in an unusual misjudgement, he missed a corner on the descent after the gravel climb late in the 177.4km bumpy ride from Alcossebre and briefly went off the road while duelling for the lead with his nearest rival Enric Mas.
But normal service was finally resumed with the world champion eventually settling back into his work and seeing off Movistar’s Spanish hope Mas by winning a heads-up sprint finish comfortably at Castello, as the pair finished 46 seconds clear of their pursuers.
It was Pogacar’s third win in the space of five completed stages, to extend his advantage overall from Mas to three minutes 34 seconds, with four-time winner Primoz Roglic third at 4:21.
Such has Pogacar’s absolute domination been, though, that the stage offered up a bit of a shock as Mas gave him a real fight in a splendid duel over a gravel section, on the climb and on the descent.
Pogacar’s Australian lieutenant Jay Vine in the UAE Team Emirates-XRG outfit had earlier done another fine job, setting a fierce pace on the Puerto El Bartolo climb and setting up his leader to take control 2.5km from the top and with 23km remaining.
It was expected ‘Pogi’ would just fly away from the field as he’s done routinely in so many stage races but, instead, he got a shock as Mas hit back, and overhauled him to reach the summit first before they began the push on the descent for home.
“I was really surprised on the top. He flew past me like a rocket,” Pogacar admitted.
“I was not expecting it because I heard on the radio I was 40 seconds ahead of the chasers and Enric wasn’t mentioned. When he passed me, I was little bit shocked.”
So shocked that it perhaps accounted for his mistake on the descent as Mas had also been seen to be warning Pogacar, an excellent descender, to take it easy.
But he quickly latched back on to Mas’s wheel after the mistake, and the pair duked it out to the finish where the world champ’s finishing speed made it a procession. “I did what I had to do — but Pogacar is just Pogacar,” sighed Mas.
Vine remains the leading Australian, but after a tough day’s work for his leader, he had moved down the general classification from 10th to 19th, 14:45 down on Pogacar.
