RABOBANK’S GESINK READY FOR SPANISH MOUNTAINS

It’s a warm cloudy afternoon in Almeria in southeast Spain, and Rabobank’s Robert Gesink is taking it easy in the lobby of his team hotel on the Vuelta’s second rest day. Gesink is smiling and joking with the team management and some journalists, but you can’t help thinking he’s got precious little free time left before the Tour of Spain hits the mountains on stage 12 on Friday.

After that it’s non-stop racing all the way to Madrid. Assuming all goes well (and that’s a big assumption) Gesink is on track for the first top three grand tour finish of his career. And he’s still only 23. That’s already pretty impressive, but historically there’s even more to it. Gesink could become the first Dutchman to finish on the podium of a major stage race since Erik Breukink (his team manager at Rabobank) ended up third in the Tour de France in 1990. He’d also be the first pro from the Netherlands to finish on the Vuelta podium since Joop Zootemelk won the race overall in 1979.

“I’m going to be taking this day-to-day; I’m not thinking about the final result because that would mean too much pressure,” Gesink tells Giant’s website when asked if he’s aware that he could soon be ending a two-decade Dutch drought on podium places in major tours. “To be honest, if I could sign now to get third overall in Madrid, I would! But at the same time, I’m not ruling anything out, and that includes winning.”

Of the three mountain-top finishes coming up, Gesink says that the stage to Sierra Nevada on Saturday is the one which suits him the best. “It just climbs steadily rather than being very steep, like at Velefique on stage 12. [Alejandro] Valverde [the overall Vuelta leader at this point] is better at those sorts of really tough ascents than me. I have problems following sudden, vicious accelerations. But apart from that, I know Sierra Nevada well from training at altitude there.”

“Today we went out to ride up the Velefique,” he continues. “Not because I feel I need to see it - we go over it twice in tomorrow’s stage - but because I hate sitting here in the hotel doing nothing all the way through the rest day! In any case, I’m very optimistic about this year’s Vuelta, I’ve come through some hard stages already and I’m feeling in good shape.”

The 23-year-old agrees that the next three days will almost certainly decide the overall outcome of the race, even though it finishes a week later. “These three days are the hardest mountain stages of the race,” he says. “Once you’ve got a good lead after this, all you have to do is defend it, rather than seek to increase it. My own personal objectives here are a stage win and a podium in Madrid. If I get both, I’ll leave Spain feeling satisfied.”