🎥 The moment Enric Mas showed he was the strongest rider at the Vuelta a España

Enric Mas is going to win the Vuelta a España — and who would have expected that before this race? The 31-year-old Movistar leader has always performed well in his home Grand Tour, as shown by his three second-place finishes and one third place in the overall standings. Even Mas, however, could barely believe after Stage 20 that he is now set to win the 2026 Tour of Spain.

After Tadej Pogačar was forced to abandon the race, everyone expected an open battle for the red jersey, but Mas simply proved to be the strongest rider and, backed by an exceptionally strong Movistar team, controlled the final two weeks. There was nothing for his rivals to gain in Stage 20 either, with Mas once again riding many of them off his wheel on the final climb.

“It’s the first time in my life I feel like this,” an emotional Mas said in the organisation’s flash interview. For a rider who had won only six races before this Vuelta, this impending overall victory represents the crowning achievement of his career. “I’m happy. To be honest, I was just counting the kilometres. My feeling was super. The team did a super good job again.” Mas made it clear that his teammates had made the victory possible.

Speaking to the Spanish media, Mas — who has not always been particularly talkative while wearing the red jersey over the past few weeks — went into a little more detail about the extraordinary twentieth stage. Almost everyone tried to attack at some point, but Mas remained calm throughout and essentially only needed to keep an eye on second-placed Primož Roglič (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) and Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM).

He managed that with aplomb, although Mas and Gall did allow one rider to go clear during the very final moments. “With the legs we had as a team, I saw myself as the winner of the Vuelta almost from the start of the stage,” Mas said confidently. Nobody was able to attack him successfully, as once again became clear on the penultimate day of the Vuelta. “If nothing went wrong and everything went according to plan, I started believing it more and more.”

Mas’ superiority was perhaps best illustrated by a brief moment during an attack from Richard Carapaz. Everyone else had to grit their teeth to follow the EF Education-EasyPost rider from Ecuador, while Mas had just taken a gel and calmly set off after him while remaining seated in the saddle. He never even had to spit the gel out — his legs simply did the work.