Ethan Hayter Was Wearing Shredded Shorts at the Vuelta a España. What’s Going On?

Ethan Hayter channeled his frustration at an agonizingly small near-miss Saturday into a big, brave bid for the race leader’s red jersey on Sunday.

The Briton was clad in the green jersey of Vuelta points leadership by virtue of the fact that the time trial winner Tadej Pogačar could only wear one classification kit. He got into a four man break early on but at some point during the stage the legs of his green skinsuit ended up visibly shredded.

Was he savaged by a wild animal, perhaps, or rode through a bramble bush?

Turns out it was a very different reason altogether.

“The organization, for some reason, only gave me an extra small. They didn’t have any spares,” he told TNT Sports after the stage. “They said you can wear your own team kit or the green jersey.

“I said, ‘I can’t wear my own team kit, you never know when your last day is in the jersey.’ Then we started the race and it was like cutting the blood from my legs.

“It looked a bit silly but I was really suffering in the breakaway and then I started to feel a lot better once I made some breathing room for my legs.”

Hayter needed all the oomph he could get as he was on a real mission improbable.

He missed out on a win in the opening TT by the blink of an eye or, to be more precise, 0.09 of a second.

That left him out of the red leader’s jersey but very much within striking distance. His chances of gapping Pogačar in the hilly finale were slim to none, and so the intermediate sprint 36km from the finish became the focus.

However Wout van Aert was just nine seconds back overall and certain to target that plus the finish. Some alternative thinking was needed.

‘He was amazingly strong’

“The tactic was of course to try to take the red jersey,” Soudal Quick-Step directeur sportif Sep Vanmarcke said. “He would have deserved it yesterday but one special guy was better. It was just very close and today he would try again.

“We knew it was a risk to go in the early breakaway, of course, that it wouldn’t come down to the bonus sprint. But on the other hand I think many other riders dream about having a leader’s jersey in a Grand Tour. And he was that close that we had to try it.”

The stage began in Monaco and the attacks kicked off early on. Koen Bouwman (Jayco AlUla) and Diego Uriarte (Kern Pharma) soon got clear and Hayter bridged 30km in. Sinhué Fernandez (Burgos-Burpellet-BH) joined soon afterwards and the four-man move was gone.

His sensations were initially not good. Slicing the restrictive shorts proved to be the key and Hayter soon felt a lot better.

He needed to: Visma-Lease a Bike was doing much of the chasing behind, trying to get Van Aert into red, and a gap which neared two minutes at one point was much less than that approaching the sprint.

That prompted Hayter to go it alone 49km from the line, and 13 from the intermediate sprint. He rode incredibly strongly, fending off the pursuit behind and hitting the prime line 29 seconds clear.

“He was amazingly strong in the hilly part, the last 20km before the bonus sprint,” Vanmarcke continued. “He took it, that gave us a good first mark, but then of course we knew now your job is to make it with the bunch to the finish line. Then he could take it if of course Pogačar wouldn’t win.”

That’s where things got tricky.

The top names go all in

Once through the sprint, Hayter eased back. There was no way he was going to hold off a rampaging main bunch and so he figured the best thing was to return to the bunch, recover as well as possible and then hope and pray that things didn’t get too wild in the final.

Van Aert had other plans, though, surging with 2km remaining. Pogačar suffered, but managed to get across to his wheel. That led to a slight drop in pace, XDS-Astana rider Alesandro Romele bridged, and then the peloton closed.

Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) won the uphill sprint ahead of Pau Miquel (Bahrain-Victorious) and Pogačar. Hayter was the wrong side of a gap and was given a time 31 seconds back. It was game over for the race lead, at least for now.

“There was almost a crash and a small gap at the end,” he said. “It was a hard final for someone who has been in the breakaway. Even for the positioning, I didn’t have the legs to really move any further forward than I was. It’s a shame but it was nice to try.”

It was, and he gave a great example of an athlete hyper-focused on a goal and doing his utmost to achieve it.

It didn’t work out this time but, in terms of effort and application, it was, as Vanmarcke said, pretty much perfect.

“We planned it like this. He achieved to do exactly what we agreed on him to do,” he said.

“And the last kilometers, okay, he has been 170km in a breakaway, part of it alone. If then guys like Van Aert go and Pogačar, we cannot expect that he can still follow.

“I think it was pretty honest in the final and we did everything that we were able to do to fight for that red jersey.”

They did everything, including taking a blade to the hallowed points classification kit Hayter was honored to wear.

That’s an A for effort, and he will surely be on the attack again at this race.