Jonas Vingegaard warmed up before the WorldTour stage races with a third consecutive stage victory in O Gran Camiño, dominating against Lenny Martinez, David Gaudu, Egan Bernal and Hugh Carthy in wet weather.
Due to weather conditions, the stage was shortened by 29 kilometres but the mountain top finish up Monte Aloia (7.1 km, 8%) was left in the race. Jonas Vingegaard in the previous two mountain days did average climbing performances for his standards on irregular climbs. On stage 2 on Alto de San Pedro de Licora he did 6.97 ᵉW/Kg for 11:24 min but yesterday on Alto do Couso he pushed 6.97 ᵉW/Kg for 9:28 min and 8.32 ᵉW/Kg in the last 4:19 min of the climb.
Ruben Guerreiro before the climb burned 2892 kilojoules for 3:16h, which is 13.42 kj/kg/h—a medium intensity day. Due to weather problems, there was no TV footage. According to the race organizers, Vingegaard attacked around 3 km to go, while before that there were attacks from other riders.
To win the stage Vingegaard did 6.56 ᵉW/Kg for 19:39 min. The first part of the climb was done slowly and after Vingegaard launched he did a negative split, doing around 7 w/kg. Lenny Martinez lost only 16 seconds to the Dane, which must be very encouraging for Groupama-FDJ. Martinez is a pure w/kg climber and performs well on easy/medium hard days as he is extremely lightweight. Martinez did 6.37 ᵉW/Kg for 19:55 min. Martinez has not performed yet on a hard day at elite level but he is still young and might improve. With an expiring contract this season, Groupama-FDJ will try everything to keep him.
Great news for Egan Bernal fans as the Colombian finished fourth but lost 48 seconds to Vingegaard in the last three kilometres, doing 6.14 ᵉW/Kg for 20:27 min. Bernal still is not at his 2021 level but even if he was, he would need to improve to win World Tour stage races or podium Grand Tour as the level has risen in the last seasons.
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