The first day of the post-Pogačar Vuelta delivered hard racing on the most demanding stage of the race, which produced a thrilling GC battle on the final climb to Alto de Aitana, sitting high above Spain’s Costa Blanca, with new race leader Enric Mas outsprinting Oscar Onley in a two-up dash to the line for a statement victory on his first day in red, grabbing his first win in four years. Early in the stage, a large breakaway pushed clear, building a nearly six-minute lead, but Decathlon’s pacemaking reeled in the last remaining survivor, UAE’s Pavel Sivakov, as they set up an attack from their leader Félix Gall, with five riders drilling the pace on the lower slopes. But the Austrian’s repeated attacks from 7 kilometers out never achieved separation and likely left him depleted when Mas counterpunched at 3.2 kilometers to go, meaning that only Onley could go with him. Primoz Roglič nearly bridged under the 2km banner but faded to third at 12 seconds, while Gall came home fourth at 18 seconds, seeing him surrender nearly half a minute when time bonuses were included on a stage when he was going for a knock-out blow.
As we look ahead to the remainder of this Vuelta on its first rest day, the main takeaway from the first week should be that without Tadej Pogačar in the race, what seemed impossible in Monaco just over a week ago now seems likely, with Enric Mas’s dominance on Stage 9’s final climb and both he and his Movistar team exuding poise. With Mas now viewing himself as capable of matching accelerations and winning sprints against the strongest GC riders left in the race, toppling his lead won’t be easy, but with the race still so tight, and the top four so evenly matched, there will be plenty of chances for Oscar Onley, Félix Gall and Primož Roglič to pressure Mas through the remainder of this race.
Check out the blow-by-blow breakdown of a few key moments and takeaways from the stage, as well as a few rest-day reflections, below:
Stage Top Five
1) Enric Mas (Movistar) +0:00 (10-second time bonus)
2) Oscar Onley (Netcompany-INEOS) +0:00 (6-second time bonus)
3) Primož Roglič (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +0:12 (4-second time bonus)
4) Félix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) +0:18
5) Cristian Rodríguez (XDS Astana) +0:20
General Classification Top Ten After Stage 9
1) Enric Mas (Movistar) +0
2) Primož Roglič (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +1:18
3) Félix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) +1:39
4) Oscar Onley (Netcompany-INEOS) +2:20
5) Richard Carapaz (EF Education - EasyPost) +3:26
6) Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl - Trek) +3:55
7) Sepp Kuss (Visma | Lease a Bike) +4:09
8) Harold Tejada (XDS Astana Team) +4:39
9) Gregor Mühlberger (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) +7:33
10) Jakob Omrzel (Bahrain - Victorious) +8:05
Where the Top Five Have Won/Lost Time So Far:
Stage 1 Individual Time Trial
Primož Roglič +0
Enric Mas -11
Richard Carapaz -11
Félix Gall -24
Oscar Onley -28Stage 2 Uphill Sprint
Oscar Onley +0
Richard Carapaz +0
Enric Mas +0
Primož Roglič +0
Félix Gall -18Stage 4 Mountain Stage
Félix Gall +0
Oscar Onley -2
Enric Mas -6
Primož Roglič -6
Richard Carapaz -24Stage 6 Mountain Stage
Enric Mas +0
Félix Gall -56
Richard Carapaz -58
Primož Roglič -58
Oscar Onley -1:50Stage 7 Mountain Stage w/Summit Finish
Félix Gall +0
Enric Mas -10
Primož Roglič -23
Oscar Onley -23
Richard Carapaz -1:16Stage 9 Mountain Stage w/Summit Finish
Enric Mas +0
Oscar Onley -4
Primož Roglič -18
Felix Gall -28
Richard Carapaz -1:04
Points Jersey Top Three
1) Wout van Aert (Visma | Lease a Bike) - 124pts
2) Matthew Brennan (Visma | Lease a Bike) - 67pts
3) Alessandro Romele (XDS Astana) - 59pts
KOM Top Three
1) Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain-Victorious) - 29pts
2) Enric Mas (Movistar) - 24pts
3) Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility) - 19pts
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Stage 9 Race Notebook
67.8km-to-go: With a large, motivated breakaway up the road, the Movistar team of race leader Enric Mas gets to the front of the peloton and sets a pace hard enough to keep the peloton under control, but easy enough that the gap grows large enough for the break to take the stage and time bonuses.
8.7km: But, heading into the final climb, with UAE’s Pavel Sivakov attacking and getting clear at the front, Felix Gall’s Decathlon team comes forward in the peloton and sets an extremely hard pace, quickly taking the break’s gap from near six minutes down to less than two minutes with over 8kms of climbing remaining.
6.9km: Shortly after, Decathlon’s last man, Gregor Muhlberger, gets to the front and sets an extremely hard pace, in preparation for a Gall attack. However, Gall is already under pressure and unlikely to attack from here. Also, behind, Mas refuses to be drawn into this trap, and keeps riding his own pace to avoid going too far into the red.
6.9km cont.: When Muhlberger peels off, Gall attacks.
6.9km cont.: The fact that Gall is over the limit already, and that this part of the climb, with its lack of ultra-steep gradient and high speeds, doesn’t allow for instant separation, means that Mas and the other contenders can easily close the gap.
5.7km: With Gall having used up his entire Decathlon team before the hardest part of the climb, things stall out in the GC group as they hit an exposed section.
3.9km: Gall attempts to attack again, but without teammates and top form, he can’t ramp the pace up high enough to create separation.
3km: With a counter-move dangling a few meters off the front, Mas sees his chance and explodes from the peloton, using the dangling move as a launchpad to whip clear up the road.
2.8km: Mas, in an extremely uncharacteristic move, keeps powering clear out of the saddle. Behind, only Oscar Onley can bridge across.
941m: After Onley shares a few pulls, Mas gets to the front and powers through the final 2km. Behind, Primož Roglič chases, getting close to catching on before Mas lays down just enough power to hold him off.
125m: Coming into the final sprint, Onley is in perfect position to come around the much-slower Mas for the stage win.
Finish: However, Mas is on such good form that Onley, already on the limit in the wheel, can’t increase his speed to contest the sprint, allowing Mas to roll over the line to grab a massive victory in his first day in a Grand Tour leader’s jersey.
Three Rest Day Reflections
1) Enric Mas & Movistar Look Up the Challenge of Defending This Race Lead: With no career history of having defended a race leader’s jersey, and major questions swirling regarding his ability to do so following the crash and abandonment of Tadej Pogačar, the 31-year-old Spaniard came out and delivered the most impressive performance of his career.
In the span of a few kilometers, Mas went from looking vulnerable to looking like the favorite for the eventual overall win.
Through the final 1.7km, Mas remained on the front, but was pushing such a hard pace that Primož Roglič was unable to even get on his wheel, and the quicker Oscar Onley was pinned to the point where he couldn’t get out of the wheel to even attempt a sprint.
Between his own composure and his Movistar team managing the breakaway gap perfectly, Mas has seemingly done the impossible by making himself look unshakeable and his Movistar like an untouchable GC fortress.
2) Decathlon & Félix Gall’s Overly Aggressive Tactics Raise Major Questions: If Movistar and Mas looked untouchable, Félix Gall and his Decathlon team looked so out of sorts on the final climb of Stage 9 that they not only look like outsiders as challengers for the overall win, but even the overall podium.
For example, after taking over pacemaking at the base of the final climb, they almost immediately cranked up the pace to the point where Gall was without a domestique and pot-committed to a long-range attack with almost 7km remaining.
Perhaps they had been crunching a little too much Pogačar tape, but normal riders shouldn’t assume they can ride clear of a GC group on a relatively flat section of a climb from 7km-to-go, and the fact that Decathlon went all-in on this strategy meant that they essentially squandered their collective strength.
The team went from having numerical superiority and the ability to get Gall to the last few kilometers with multiple domestiques, but instead burned through their last domestique and left Gall to fend for himself on an extremely difficult, exposed stretch of road.
Had they simply waited and launched Gall from 3 km to go, they could have taken a few seconds, along with the time bonus for the stage win.
Instead, they ended up surrendering nearly half a minute, compounding his losses from earlier in the week, like when he gave up 18 seconds on the Stage 2 uphill sprint, leaving Gall in a situation where he is giving up time to Mas in the time trials, sprint stages and the toughest mountain stage.
3) Primož Roglič Is Still the Leader in the Clubhouse: The brutal climbing on Sunday’s Stage 9 tells us that there are likely four riders who will be contesting the GC for the next two weeks.
Based on the data from the first nine stages, it looks like Richard Carapaz, Mattias Skjelmose, and Sepp Kuss, all coming off a tough Tour de France, are out of contention for the win based on the fact that they have consistently looked off-the-pace on the toughest climbs.
Meanwhile, Oscar Onley, Felix Gall, and Primož Roglič have shown the ability to climb at a level where they could, at least theoretically, turn the tables on Mas over the final two weeks.
The reason Mas might want to be more concerned about Roglič than the others is that with each of these contenders producing similar watts per kilogram figures on climbs, things will remain tight through the remainder of this Vuelta.
Assuming they do, Roglič's time-trialing ability and his performances against Mas over the last three seasons mean that, at the current time gaps, he could take the overall win if they went into Stage 18 with their current gaps.
Roglič Gains on Mas in non-mountain time trial head-to-heads 2024-2026
2026 La Vuelta Stage 1 (9.4km): 11 seconds (1.2 seconds per km)
2026 Tour de Suisse Stage 4 (23.7km): 77 seconds (3.2 seconds per km)
2025 Tour de France Stage 5 (33km): 98 seconds (2.9 seconds per km)
2024 La Vuelta Stage 21 (24.6km): 63 seconds (2.6 seconds per km)Projected Stage 18 Time Trial Time Difference: Roglič takes 1:20 on Mas
Stage 10 Preview
Racing resumes after today’s rest day with a hilly 184.7-kilometer stage from Alcaraz to Elche de la Sierra that sits squarely in breakaway territory: rarely flat, never brutally steep, and with 2,991 meters of climbing that should be too much for the pure sprinters but not enough to bring the GC men to the fore.
The road climbs from the gun over the Puerto de las Cruces (gentle gradients, with the final 3.2km at 5%), descends through Riópar, and continues over the Puerto de Peralejo (5.2km at 4.2%) before more than 20 kilometers of rolling roads and a 7.7-kilometer climb at 4% out of Aýna. From there the route trends gradually downhill, though it is never truly flat.
Leading into the finale, an uncategorized ramp at 8.1% comes too far out to decide anything, before the final classified climb, the Puerto de Socovos (9.7km at 3.5%), crests 21.4 kilometers from the line.
A gentle descent, a 1.7-kilometer rise at 5.5%, and a final 4.5 kilometers dragging uphill to the finish complete the picture: a finish for resilient sprinters if their teams control it, or for a strong breakaway if the GC teams are content to let the day go.
After the rest day and the brutal Aitana stage, expect a ferocious fight for the break since the profile presents one of the best opportunities for the stage-hunters, and, for a rider like Wout van Aert, getting into the early move could be more realistic than asking his Visma team to control it from the peloton.
Prediction: Wout van Aert wins from the breakaway after slowly whittling down the group and outsprinting the remaining companions. There are no changes in the GC.