Vuelta a Espana 2021: Egan Bernal rides his luck but Romain Bardet bows out of GC battle

Poor Rein Taaramae. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. On Tuesday, there was a sting in the tail to the Estonian’s first day in red when the race leader, having drifted back in the peloton, was taken out by another rider deviating into his front wheel. The three-kilometre rule meant Taaramae retained the red jersey which he subsequently lost 24 hours later when, this time far better placed near the front of the peloton, he was caught out following a pile-up he was unable to avoid.

"Again, it was an unlucky crash, I’m almost OK, even my clothing was in one piece," Taaramae said after the stage. "Actually, it was a bad idea to be in a good position because the crash happened near the front and the guys at the back passed but I was up there and it took some minutes to go again.”

Unlike Taaramae, Colombia’s Egan Bernal – in the white jersey as best young rider – managed to avoid the pile-up by the narrowest of margins. The reigning Giro d’Italia champion was trying to follow the wheel of a cluster of his Ineos Grenadiers teammates when the peloton suddenly narrowed. Danish champion Mads Wurtz touched wheels with a rider from Caja-Rural, skidded and took out Israel Start-Up Nation teammate Davide Cimolai who, at that very moment, was riding right next to Bernal. The two brushed shoulders but the man in white somehow avoided hitting the deck.

It us upon such quirks of fate that Grand Tours are won and lost.

“The crash was right next to me, but I was very focused on going in front and I didn't notice,” Bernal later said, clearly underplaying the incident. Not only would he have seen and heard the crash, he still had to put in an unseated surge to fill the gap which suddenly appeared around him and bridge back over to his Ineos teammates in the leading group.

In Stage 5 of the Giro d’Italia, Mikel Landa was taken out by a sprawling Joe Dombrowski, the stage winner 24 hours earlier, as the peloton rampaged through road furniture on the outskirts of Cattolica. That was the end of Landa’s Giro – and with it, possibly the Basque rider's best chance ever at winning a Grand Tour.

In Stage 5 at the Vuelta on Wednesday, Bernal avoided Landa’s fate to keep his dreams of becoming the youngest rider to win all three of cycling’s Grand Tours alive. The Colombian moved up one place to eighth, 27 seconds down on the defending champion Primoz Roglic, after Taaramae plummeted out of the top 10. But it could have been very different.

The Estonian was not the only casualty of the pile-up, with Spanish veteran Mikel Nieve (Team BikeExchange) and Germany’s Ben Zwiehoff (Bora-Hansgrohe) both needing medical attention, the latter dislocating his right shoulder. But the biggest victim in the battle for red was the Frenchman Romain Bardet, who careered off the road and crashed into a rocky field – suffering some serious road rash on his back and a blow to his knee.

Bardet finished the stage over 12 minutes back and dropped from 14th place to 93rd. If he recovers he will be free to go for a stage win in the mountains but his GC ambitions are over just when they were starting to look really good (the 30-year-old trailed Roglic by just 46 seconds going into the stage).

There are echoes of his Tour de France demise in 2020 when Bardet was just 30 seconds down on Roglic and in fourth place before crashing in the Massif Central and falling three minutes back. He withdrew the next day. Given his leader’s setback, it was perhaps a bit off for the DSM directeur sportif to turn Bardet’s crash into a marketing spot for one of the team’s sponsors – but that is perhaps the nature of the pro sport nowadays.

Bernal will be counting his lucky stars that he was not half a metre further to the right when the fateful touch of wheels occurred – sparking life into an otherwise deadly dull stage in which the expected crosswinds had failed to materialise.

If the Colombian goes on to win this race, it will not simply be because of his performances at Lagos de Covadonga or on the Alto de Gamoniteiru – it will be because he somehow contrived to stay on his bike in Stage 5, the flattest and dullest stage of all three Grand Tours in 2021.

For Taaramae, at least the Estonian veteran could afford to be stoic about swapping his red jersey for the polka dot jersey that new race leader Kenny Elissonde had been keeping warm for him these past two days.

"Two days in the red jersey, that was good for me. It was nice to experience but I’m not so sad to lose it,” he said. “I would have lost it tomorrow or the day after so it’s not a big deal. We’ll see day by day, but I think I can defend the polka dot jersey more than the leader’s jersey.”

At this point, Taaramae will simply settle for not coming down for a third day on the bounce.