'We wanted to save our energy a bit' – why has there been a GC stalemate at the Vuelta a España this week?

After seven stages of this year's Tour de France, 3:43 separated the top 10 overall; there were 54 seconds between first and second, and Tadej Pogačar, the eventual winner, was leading already.

After seven stages of this year's Vuelta a España, there might be 2:58 between Torstein Træen (Bahrain Victorious) in first and Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) in 10th, but between the riders thought to be favourites for general classification, there is just 30 seconds.

Between Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) in second place, 2:33 behind Træen and Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) in 11th, there is 30 seconds, with João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) and Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) in their midst.

Obviously, you could argue its a quirk of the stages ridden so far; at this year's Giro d'Italia, just 39 seconds separated the top 10 after seven days, but there hadn't been many hard GC days yet.

At this Vuelta, there have already been three summit finishes, including two category-one endings, so why has the race not blown apart?

It is vanishingly simple, really, although not much succour for the fan screaming at the TV hoping for something to happen already – this race is very hard. There have been three stages with over 3,000m of climbing, but there are eight more to come, and six summit finishes.

The reason for the GC stalemate so far is that there is so much more to come, including both L'Angliru, and the Bola de Mundo on the penultimate stage. There is more than enough time to make a difference, 14 more stages, in fact.

Putting in a lot of work this early in the race might lead to burnout close to the end, especially for a rider like Vingegaard, who has already been through an entire tough Tour this summer.

"It was a decent day in total," the Dane explained on TV post-stage. "It was not easy. We wanted to save our energy a bit, so we decided not to do anything today. It was a hard last climb, but the team did well.

"If we wanted we could have fought for the win, but we wanted to save the team, we saved it for the second and third week because there it will be hard enough. We decided not to do it today."

The one attack from a GC rider on Friday came from Almeida, who after work from his teammate Marc Soler, put in a dig on the final climb. He took Vingegaard and Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) with him, but after a lack of collaboration, they were pegged back by their rivals.

"I saw that they didn’t really want to go for a hard finish." Almeida said post-stage. "I asked Marc to pull a bit to try, but I thought the climb would be harder to be honest. But it is what it is, I tried. Maybe there was an opportunity for somebody, but they also didn’t want to cooperate in the end. But yeah, one less day.

"I’ve been feeling better every day, so I think it’s a good sign. I’m looking forward to the next hard ones."

"Jonas didn’t really have to [attack], so I get it, it is what it is, but I think he doesn’t really pull a lot of the time," the Portuguese rider joked, pointedly.

In the end, Træen retained the red jersey, comfortably. While he is not thought as a threat to the overall across three weeks, the longer the stalemate goes on, the more he'll warm to his role as race leader. There are a lot of hard stages to come, however, starting with Sunday's category-one summit finish. It never ends at this Vuelta.