It was an indirect message to Tom Pidcock, but the Briton may as well have been on the same Zoom call that Jai Hindley was hosting: the Australian is fourth in the Vuelta a España, 32 seconds adrift of Pidcock, and he’s ready to land a podium spot in the final six days of racing. History tells him it’s not just doable, but probable.
“My biggest strength as a rider I’d say is my repeatability,” the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider told the press on the race’s second rest day. “I wouldn’t say I’m super hot in a one-week race” – he’s not, he’s only podiumed once in one of the Big-7 one-week World Tour races (at Tirreno-Adriatico in 2024) – “but over a three week period I can stay pretty consistent. I’ve had that feeling ever since I was a neo-pro. I remember when I did my first Vuelta in 2018, I found the first two weeks pretty hard, and by the end I was finding my feet, also physically, and I’ve felt that in almost every Grand Tour I’ve done. It’s the way I am, my physiology.”
There are a few more factors that are making Hindley hopeful of landing his third career Grand Tour podium, to go with his win from the 2022 Giro d’Italia, and his second place in the 2020 Giro. “I had a pretty nasty crash at the Giro [this year, retiring on stage six with a fractured vertebra and concussion] and had to take some time off which wasn’t ideal and meant I couldn’t stick to the original program the team planned for me.” But, big but. “In the end I could come here a bit fresher than the other guys who’ve already done [and completed] a Grand Tour this year. Maybe it’s a benefit, because it’s hard graft [finishing a Grand Tour]. I enjoy racing the Vuelta, it’s a pretty sick race, but unfortunately in the last couple of years I was coming out of the Tour de France in a body bag, so I’m really happy and super motivated to be here this year. It was a big goal.”
Three summit finishes await in the final week of racing, including an horrendously steep finish up to the Bola del Mundo on stage 20. “For sure that’s an epic day coming up,” Hindley predicted. “It will be really decisive with three weeks in the legs.” What will also be pivotal – or “absolutely crucial,” as he termed it – will be stage 18’s 27km mostly flat time trial in Valladolid. “It will be much harder than people expect,” he said.
Time trialling has frequently been Hindley’s undoing. Indeed, he lost the 2020 Giro to Tao Geoghegan Hart in a final day TT, and he’s never scored a top-10 in an individual ride against the clock as a pro. Pidcock is adjudged to have a marginally better TT, but Hindley’s Red Bull team have two not-so-secret weapons. “We were pretty fortunate to have Dan Bigham and Jonny Wale coming to the team – these guys have a lot of experience and knowledge and they’re really on it. For someone like me who the TT has always been my biggest weakness, to have these guys helping you is a huge benefit. I put a lot of trust in them, in their expertise. I’ve worked pretty hard my whole career, but especially the last two years on my TT bike more than ever.”
Hindley has the experience and form to deny Tom Pidcock a first Grand Tour podium.
Hindley’s confidence also stems from the fact that he believes that this is his best form since he won the Giro in 2022. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been at this level,” he said. “It’s hard to pinpoint one thing [why] and it’s not like I’ve been sat on the couch doing nothing with my feet up – I’ve really given everything I can since the Giro 2022 – but for one reason or another it didn’t eventuate to that. It’s been pretty frustrating, so I’m happy to be back at a pointy end of a Grand Tour which I haven’t been for some years.”
You can tell he’s confident of knocking Pidcock off third spot. Possibly even reaching for higher goals. So far, race leader Jonas Vingegaard and his nearest challenger João Almeida have been a step above Pidcock, Hindley and the other GC riders, but Hindley has noticed a Vingegaard who “may not be at the level he was at at the Tour, but still at a pretty damn good level”, and an Almeida who isn’t fully backed by his UAE Team Emirates-XRG colleagues. “You can’t knock them – how many stages have they won? Seven. It’s quite a lot," he said of UAE. "On one hand it’s been an exceptional race for them, but also tactically maybe they could invest a bit more in Almeida’s GC bid. You look at Almeida and he’s possibly got the legs of his life here.”
The circumstances leave the door open for a late Hindley charge. “You race to win bike races, as simple as that,” he said. “At the moment I think the race is for the podium, but it’s a Grand Tour, three weeks long, and it can be very unpredictable.” One only needs to think back to how this year’s Giro ended, with Simon Yates stealing victory away from Isaac Del Toro and Richard Carapaz. “I don’t know how my rivals will be coming into the last week, but with my history of Grand Tours, I normally always feel like I hold my own in the third week," Hindley said. "I’m feeling pretty good, so I am optimistic about how it’s going. I think in general the Vuelta is still to play for.”
