Bad legs and struggling domestiques: Enric Mas is glad stage 16 of the Vuelta a España is over: 'Very, very easy'

Enric Mas is glad he made it through the 16th stage of the Vuelta a España unscathed. The Spanish overall leader from Movistar admitted after the finish of the flat stage in Spain that his legs weren’t feeling their best on the day. However, his rivals didn’t get a chance to take advantage of it.

"For me, it was great that today's stage was fairly flat," said Mas in a flash interview shortly after the finish as the overall leader. "It was great for the team, too, because we still needed to rest a bit from last week. We’ll have time for that today and tomorrow, even though these aren’t exactly easy days. They’re certainly different, though."

When asked how his legs felt during the first stage after the second rest day, Mas replied honestly: “My legs were a little stiff after yesterday. We really had to take it very, very easy, so that’s only to be expected. I hope my legs will feel better tomorrow, but we’ll have to see,” said the red jersey wearer.

Mas won't be back in the thick of things until Stage 18, when an individual time trial of just over 32 kilometers awaits. The same goes for Iván Romeo and Pablo Castrillo, who, riding for Movistar as Mas’s climbing domestiques, took it even easier that day and finished more than 11 minutes behind the winner. “All in all, we did well; Enric had a pretty quiet day in the peloton,” Roméo told Eurosport.

Movistar did have to be careful for a bit in the first half of the stage, when UAE Emirates-XRG set a fast pace for the breakaway, forcing the general classification contenders to keep up for a while. “We knew it was going to be a tough day, but Enric was incredibly strong. We tried to help him as best we could.”