Enric Mas finally sounds like a Vuelta winner after Stage 20: ‘I saw myself as the winner’

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, 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 of the race. There was nothing for his rivals to gain in Stage 20 either, with Mas once again distancing many of them on the final climb and showing that he had the legs to deal with anything thrown at him.

“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. I won because the team did everything for me.”

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 a close 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, I saw myself as the winner almost from the start of the stage,” Mas said confidently. Nobody was able to put him under sustained pressure, as once again became clear in the penultimate stage of the Vuelta. “If nothing went wrong and everything went according to plan, I was honestly believing it more and more. I was counting down the kilometres and, once again, you saw the team — they were a 10 out of 10.”