He may be leaving the team soon, but Mike Tunissen inherited the Vuelta a España lead from teammate Robert Gesink on the second stage in Utrecht.

The Dutch racer insisted that he would not put his lead in the Vuelta ahead of Roglic's GC options, even if he finished fourth in Saturday's stage 2 sprint and was allowed to try his luck from team leader Primos Roglic in the final kilometer.

Tunisen, who is already leading in the first week of the 2019 Tour de France, said his biggest mission in the Vuelta is to protect the Slovenian, quoting Gesink on Friday night that the decision to put him in the red jersey was "something special and a trust from the team He said he felt it was "a testament.

Given that Tunissen will leave Jumbo Visma at the end of the season for another team, Intermarche Wanty-Gobert Materieux, the team's decision was certainly even more remarkable than it was for Goessink.

As Tunissen puts it, he is moving because Jumbo Visma "has been doing better than I have in the last few years," and he is convinced that his current team is "one of the best teams in the world, if not the best," and that his new team "has already accomplished what Jumbo has He praises both the current team as "one of the best in the world, if not the best" and the new team as "growing in some ways, as Jumbo has already done.

"To get this jersey is a bolt from the blue," Tunissen, who finished fourth in the group sprint in Utrecht, told reporters. "To get this jersey is like a bolt from the blue," Tunissen said.

However, he did not rule out the possibility of another sprint in Breda on Sunday, and when that possibility came up, "Ask the team!"

Tunissen chuckled, but insisted that Roglic's interests came first.

"All kidding aside, my job is to keep Primosch out of the wind.

"At the moment, it may be in the second half of the Vuelta, but it's not my goal.

Tunissen further said that if he were to leave Jumbo Visma, he hoped that he would have the chance to participate in races like the Tour and Classics, where Jumbo's recent level of success had increasingly limited his options for participation.

"I'm not 29 yet, and I'm at a point in my career where I have to choose what I want to do," Tunissen said.

"But right now I'm focused on this Vuelta and not thinking about next year. I'll get through this race and then I'll think about it."