"We thought: then we’ll just sprint there"; Vuelta chaos through the eyes of overjoyed stage winner Egan Bernal

Bernal was one of the big names in a large breakaway of seventeen riders and was himself responsible for some of the damage on the climbs. In the end, he and Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step) were left at the front, with Bernal outsprinting him at the improvised finish line eight kilometers before the original one.

“After I dropped from the GC, I really wanted to go for a stage win,” said the climber, who had started this year’s Vuelta with overall ambitions. “I really wanted to win in my national jersey, and that means a lot to me,” added Bernal, who celebrated his first WorldTour victory since his serious crash in early 2022.

“It was a beautiful stage, super hard the whole day, we were going full gas” said Bernal in a brief reaction via his INEOS Grenadiers team. “The cooperation with Landa was super, and we knew the finish would be eight kilometers earlier. We thought: then we’ll sprint there. It was a good day for memories.”

Thanks to his strong performances, he is now up to twelfth place in the general classification, just 1:32 behind current tenth-place rider Junior Lecerf.