On the way to Sierra de la Pandera, Nordhagen was riding attentively. He was part of the group that eventually managed to break clear for good, alongside Steven Kruijswijk. “It was a good day for us. We wanted to have Sepp or Jørgen in the breakaway. In the end, Steven and Jørgen were in the first breakaway group pretty quickly,” says sports director Maarten Wynants afterwards.

The steep final climb caused the breakaway to split, but Nordhagen remained in contention for the victory for a long time. Eventually, he had to settle for seventh place. “It is a good boost for his morale that, after a more difficult start to this Vuelta, he has found the legs he had hoped to have from the beginning,” says the Belgian.

“The rest of the team was able to conserve their energy relatively well today. It was another very hot day, but we managed to deal with that well by making use of the different bottle points. Unfortunately, Christophe did not finish the stage. We decided that it was better for him to abandon the race so that he wouldn’t have to dig too deep into his reserves with the rest of the season still ahead of him,” Wynants concludes.