Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe lost control on the sixth stage of the Vuelta, even though they sent Florian Lipowitz into the day breakaway to keep Ben O’Connor at bay, things did not go quite according to plan.
“I had really good legs. I’m happy with my form, but I could have done better today,” said Lipowitz. “But unfortunately we missed Ben’s attack. After that, everyone looked at each other. It wasn’t perfect for us, but there are still many stages ahead of us.”
Patxi Vila, sports director of Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, admitted that things had turned out differently than they expected.
“Things got out of control,” said Vila. “Things didn’t go the way we wanted. The start was very fast and the day’s drop was very sharp. Lipo was there and we thought he would have no problem staying with Ben and we would get another option on the overall.”
“What O’Connor did was incredible. I’ve rarely seen anything like it,” said Vila. “He just didn’t lose any time on the last climb. I never expected that to be a real surprise.”
“The idea was that Lipo’s presence in the group would give the other teams a boost because they didn’t like us having another rider in the overall. But then O’Connor was so much stronger than I thought and everything got out of control.”
