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Flashback Friday: When Juan José Cobo (didn’t) win the Vuelta a España in 2011
For the 2011 Vuelta a España, Vincenzo Nibali was back on the start line to defend his title. The Geox-TMC team received a wildcard invitation alongside Andalucía-Caja Granada, Cofidis and Skil-Shimano.
Denis Menchov was pencilled in as the Geox-TMC team leader, but the tables were flipped as Juan José Cobo worked his way into the maillot rojo in a battle against Team Sky’s British duo of Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins.
The race
The Vuelta began in Benidorm, and along the way returned to the Basque Country for the first time in 33 years as well as taking on the brutal slopes of the Angliru after a three-year absence.
Many riders wore the maillot rojo in the first week, including Jakob Fuglsang (Leopard Trek), Sylvain Chavanel (QuickStep), Joaquim Rodríguez (Katusha) and Bauke Mollema (Rabobank). After HTC-HIghroad rider Tony Martin’s victory over a 47km ITT on Stage 10, Team Sky’s Chris Froome topped the general classification before his teammate Bradley Wiggins took over.
Stage 15 of the race was a 142.2km backloaded ride from Avilés to the Angliru. A short Category 1 climb of the Alto del Cordal preceded the behemoth Alto de l’Angliru, a steep 12km slog to the summit finish with an average gradient of 10.6%. Cobo took off attacking towards the end of the stage and crossed the line first, finishing 48secs in front of Vacansoleil-DCM’s Wout Poels.
With this performance and Wiggins cracking, Cobo bunnyhopped the Sky duo in the standings and moved into the race lead by 20secs over Froome. He held the red jersey to the finish in Madrid, victorious with a slim lead of 13secs over Froome, but a few years later, it all came crashing down.
The fall
Cobo moved to Movistar for the 2012 and 2013 seasons before retiring at the end of 2014 with Turkish team Torku Şekerspor. It was in 2019 that the UCI said abnormalities were present in Cobo’s biological passport between 2009 and 2011 and handed down a retroactive three-year ban as a result.
Cobo had 30 days to appeal before the Court of Arbitration for Sport but the time passed and so the 2011 Vuelta victory was awarded to Chris Froome.
The implications
Among the controversy of doping cases, it can be easy to forget the huge ramifications it has on other riders. Bauke Mollema, then riding for Rabobank provisionally finished just off the podium in fourth. When Cobo was stripped of the victory, he was bumped up to a podium spot.
This was his only podium in a Grand Tour and he was robbed of the experience. He never received his fanfare in Madrid for his efforts (although he did stand on the podium for winning the points jersey).
Wout Poels finished second behind Cobo on the Angliru stage and was retrospectively awarded the victory. It was his first in a Grand Tour. He described it as ‘pretty s**t’.
Chris Froome received the trophy for the 2011 edition of the race on the 8th November 2020. It meant he was now the first British winner of a Grand Tour, preceding Wiggins’s Tour de France victory in 2012. He also received the first overall combativity award of the race, which had been previously awarded to Cobo.
Cobo never finished near the podium of a Grand Tour again, his last participation coming at the Giro d’Italia in 2013, in which he finished 116th. Alongside his stripped 2011 Vuelta title, Cobo was also disqualified from the 2009 Vuelta in which he finished tenth overall.
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