It should have been a celebration, but Bernal wins the Vuelta stage - ruined by protests - shaking his head

Week three began with a major setback for Visma | Lease a Bike. The Dutch team lost Victor Campenaerts to illness, meaning Jonas Vingegaard, already without Axel Zingle earlier in the Vuelta, saw another key domestique drop out. Soudal Quick-Step also lost Gianmarco Garofoli, likewise due to illness.

The opening phase of the stage exploded at a furious pace. With plenty of riders eager to make the breakaway, attacks kept coming one after another. It took until 40 kilometers in before a group finally got away. The average speed during the first hour? A blistering 61 km/h!

Seventeen riders managed to get into the breakaway, and with names like Bernal (INEOS Grenadiers), Marc Soler (UAE Emirates-XRG), and Landa (Soudal Quick-Step), it was a very dangerous group. Also present were Andrea Bagioli (Lidl-Trek), Jefferson Cepeda (Movistar), and Nico Denz (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe).

Others included: Mauri Vansevenant (Soudal Quick-Step), Bob Jungels (INEOS Grenadiers), Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost), Finlay Pickering (Bahrain Victorious), Clément Braz Afonso, Rudy Molard, Brieuc Rolland (all Groupama-FDJ), Victor Guernalec, Louis Rouland (both Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Kevin Vermaeke (Picnic-PostNL), and Jake Stewart (Israel-Premier Tech).

Behind them, Visma | Lease a Bike took control. The Killer Bees kept the leaders within range, with a maximum lead of five minutes. On the first climb of the day, the breakaway had 4:20, while at that point Javier Romo abandoned the race, after the Movistar rider had previously crashed earlier in this Vuelta.

It was on the second climb, the long Alto da Groba, that the front group split apart. Landa attacked and was quickly joined by Bernal. The two crested together, soon reinforced by Rolland, his teammate Braz Afonso, and also Denz. Soler missed the move, and, as it turned out, missed the race.

So we had five leaders up front, but behind them, some riders dropped from the breakaway quickly regrouped. Realizing he had to act, Soler launched the chase. With him went Bagioli, Jungels, Pickering, Molard, Rouland, and Vermaerke.

With a massive effort, Soler tried to jump across to the leaders, but they were still working smoothly together. That left only Pickering able to hold his wheel. Slightly further back, Vermaerke, Bagioli, and Jungels came together. On the Alto de Prado, the leaders sensed the danger and effectively killed Soler's chances.

On the hardest climb of the day, with sections exceeding 20 percent, the group split again. Denz, unsurprisingly, was dropped first, followed by Rolland, who didn’t make it over the top. That left Bernal, Landa, and Braz Afonso as the first to crest the climb. Meanwhile, behind them, the peloton came alive as Bahrain Victorious picked up the pace for Torstein Træen.

Bahrain, seeing Bernal as a GC threat, set a fierce pace on the three-kilometer climb, splitting the peloton apart. Vingegaard had to swap bikes, but thanks to Ben Tulett’s engine, he lost no time. Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), however, couldn’t hold on. Soler completely sat up and waited for Almeida, to help him in the finale.

Disaster struck for Braz Afonso with 16 kilometers to go. The Frenchman punctured at a very unlucky moment and was forced to let Bernal and Landa go up front. A shame for the French team, which had managed things perfectly with three riders in the original breakaway and two in the finale.

Not long after, it became clear that protests were once again disrupting the Vuelta. Three kilometers from the planned finish, a large demonstration forced organizers to move the finish line up to eight kilometers earlier. Times would also be taken at that point. Bernal outsprinted Landa for the win, while in the favorites group only Gall slipped out of the top ten.