La Vuelta Ciclista a España 2024 Stage 20

September 7, 2024 The final road stage of La Vuelta is incredibly difficult with seven categorized climbs totaling over 4700 altitude meters, finishing atop Picón Blanco. A group of 10 riders went after about 15 kilometers, Jay Vine and Marc Soler of UAE, Clément Berthet of Decathlon AG2R, Carlos Canal of Movistar, Jack Haig of Bahrain-Victorious, Pablo Castrillo of Equipo Kern Pharma, Sylvain Moniquet of Lotto-Dstny, Marco Frigo of Israel-Premier Tech, Harold Tejada of Astana, and Thomas Champion of Cofidis. They got out to 50 seconds but some teams were still trying to make a chase group to bridge. The gap grew out to 6 minutes with 117KM to go and Ineos started to ride to keep the average pace higher than what Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe was setting. With 98KM to go, Vine went over the top of the Alto del Caracol with a 4 minute lead on the bunch. Vine pushed on with Soler and Berthet and had a gap for the descent on the rest of the break. Canal and Haig got on at the foot of the Portillo de Lunada but Soler was pushing on. Soler rode the entire climb on his own, going over the top with 30 seconds on Frigo, Berthet, Castrillo and Vine and 3 minutes 30 seconds to the peloton. Soler was caught on the descent but he was off again as soon as they hit Portillo de la Sía. T-Rex Quickstep took over from Ineos and cut the gap to the break to under 3 minutes as they arrived at the Portillo de la Sía. They continued to drill the pace and had the gap to under 1 minute as the break hit the Puerto de Los Tomos with 37KM to go. At the base, T-Rex Quickstep attacked with Mattia Cattaneo and Mikel Landa. Primož Roglič of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe followed then the rest of the GC riders got on terms with Landa. The break was swept up by the GC group of less than 15 riders with 32KM to go and over 6KM still to climb of Los Tomos. Some riders came back as the pace decreased and Pavel Sivakov of UAE attacked. He went over the top with 26KM to go with a slight lead of 17 seconds but had extended the gap to almost 1 minute as he hit the Picón Blanco, the final climb of this Vuelta at 7.9KM to go. Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe had three riders abandon on the stage leaving Roglič isolated with over 6KM to go. Eddie Dunbar of Jayco AlUla attacked at 4KM to go when the other GC favorites were marking each other out. Sivakov was caught by Dunbar and passed. A few moves from the GC favorites started closer to the line but there was not enough road for anyone to make a real difference. No one would catch Dunbar who went on to win his second stage in this Vuelta. Enric Mas of Movistar came in 7 seconds later with Roglič just behind. Ben O'Connor had been distanced further down the climb but kept his pace steady and finished strong to retain his second place overall by just 9 seconds to Mas.