Nervous rain of attacks in final phase, but Dunbar is the smartest! Roglic defends red with panache

One more time, the Vuelta went into the mountains. And how! Okay, we had already seen a lot of climbing these three weeks, but so much in a row in one stage? Seven climbs spread over 171 kilometers. Up and down all day, through beautiful Cantabria. Was it fuel for one more all-or-nothing stage? Moreover, the finish was again on a true Vuelta col, with dark red slopes as its hallmark, the Picon Blanco. It promised a great spectacle.

At the beginning of stages of this Vuelta, we often saw fierce battles for the breakaway for dozens of kilometers. Almost none of that on the final Saturday of the Vuelta. Enzo Leijnse and Kasper Asgreen accelerated and quickly caught a gap. Several men raced behind them. Where the Dane had to pass, Leijnse was joined by ten other riders. So we had a front group of eleven.

Here, we especially saw those still fighting for the mountain's classification. Marc Soler, the polka dot jersey holder, and his teammate Jay Vine of UAE Team Emirates, who was shortly behind him, were with him, as was Pablo Castrillo of Equipo Kern Pharma. The group soon extended a six-minute lead together, and it was a matter of waiting to see what would happen on the climbs.

Initially, it was Vine who got to go for the mountain jersey. Soler did not interfere with the first two sprints on the third-category climbs. However, the Spaniards accelerated on the climbs after that, which brought more points richly. He raced alone in the lead for a while but constantly returned to the chasers. So we had a strange battle for the jersey: Vine and Soler were tied with two first-category mountains to go.

The rest of the breakaway riders did not play a role, as even Castrillo settled for the UAE supremacy regarding the polka dot jersey. Marco Frigo (Israel Premier-Tech) and Clément Berthet (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) kept up the momentum the longest from the breakaway. Two teams took the initiative from the peloton, which demolished the initially significant lead of the group in front. INEOS Grenadiers set the pace for Carlos Rodríguez, Soudal Quick-Step for Mikel Landa.

Early on, during the second-to-last climb of the day and the first category, the gap was almost closed. Vine and Berthet remained at the front; Soler had already dropped out. However, it seemed to be for the GC riders. Several riders had a bad day, which led Mattia Cattaneo, so unfortunate, to have to wait for Landa two days ago to give extra gas. We already had only about ten men left at 35 kilometers from the finish. That already excluded Mathias Skjelmose and Rodriguez.

Another exciting pattern during the chaotic, beautiful stage is the Malheur within Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. Within an hour, three men abandoned the race. Yes, really! Dani Martinez, Patrick Gamper, and Nico Denz left the Vuelta seemingly with the same verdict; surely, that could not be a coincidence. Aleksandr Vlasov also had to let go early on. And that while the team of the red jersey was so good on Friday and seemed to be heading for an excellent final party in Madrid. In any case, not collectively. A staff member was also said to be ill, and so it seemed to be something along the lines of food poisoning.

At 29 kilometers from the finish, when Vine and Berthet were the last to be caught, Landa attacked in response to an earlier acceleration by Pavel Sivakov, the number ten in the GC. As a result, Florian Lipowitz and Richard Carapaz also accelerated. They were isolated attacks; even Skjelmose returned from the background. The first six climbs of the day were not steep enough for a real explosion anyway; instead, they formed the wear and tear for the steep final slope. Only Sivakov managed to create a serious gap.

The pace dropped just before the top of the second-to-last col, allowing Vine to catch up and even accelerate, heading for his mountain jersey. However, the Australian was not awarded anything because bonification seconds were left on the Tornos. Vine, fourth on the mountain, took two points and the polka dot jersey. Rodríguez was the big loser of the day at this point. He was soon reported at a large gap and dropped out of the GC.

Sivakov still cherished a small minute lead at the foot of the final climb. Was anyone in the elite group going to fall behind? At least not Roglic, who seemed unaffected by the team problems that plagued Red Bull that day. At the front, the Frenchman held his own; at five kilometers, he still had forty seconds left. Initially, Carapaz also still held his cards to his chest. The Ecuadorian had to do something to make the podium still. Meanwhile, Roglic had run out of domestiques, so the Slovenian picked up his pace from the front.

Mas followed in his wheel, Carapaz was also coming, and Ben O'Connor picked up his pace without breaking away. Eddie Dunbar attempted to jump over to Sivakov and closed the gap. However, the big names were coming in the background. Number five, David Gaudu ventured his chance for an excellent stage win and accelerated; Dunbar then unloaded Sivakov. Everything behind the Irishman slid together, giving O'Connor an advance on a podium finish. Carapaz and Mas were unable to attack the Australian climber.

In the last five hundred meters, Landa tried to catch up with Dunbar with a breakaway, followed by Roglic and Mas. To no avail, the Jayco-AlUla rider stayed ahead of Mas. Roglic was third, Carapaz fourth. Otherwise, all the men from the top would not have finished too far away.