La Vuelta Ciclista a España 2025 Stage 5

August 27, 2025 After a long transfer across France, La Vuelta finally arrives in Spain. Figueres hosts Stage 5, a 24KM Team Time Trial that runs out of and then back into the Catalan town. Team Time Trial's are much more rare than they used to be. This year, there was only one other TTT in a World Tour race which was Stage 3 of Paris-Nice around the Magny-Cours motor racing circuit in Nevers, so the riders won't have much in-race experience before today. The TTT is a very specific discipline in that the strongest team is not a sure bet to take home top honors. Strength is obviously necessary but strength without cohesion can make the effort ragged which burns teammates and will only brings the average speed down. In the Paris-Nice TTT, Visma-Lease a Bike won the stage by putting 15 seconds into Jayco AlUla and over 40 seconds into UAE-XRG and it's possible that we could see a similar result. Ineos bring a squad that could match the Dutch outfit but either way, gaps in the GC should be within the 40 second range on the pan-flat course. Lotto was the first to roll down the ramp in front of the Dalí Theatre-Museum. They hit the line at the finish with the minimum four riders with a time of 25 minutes 53 seconds. The first team to go faster was Lidl-Trek who put up a time of 25 minutes 35 seconds. Later in the day, there was an incident on course for Israel-Premier Tech. A few demonstrators crossed the road in front of the team and blocked their path. They came to stand still for a few moments until they were able to get passed and continue the effort but their chances for a result were all but eliminated. Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe were in the middle of their run when Matteo Sobrero overlapped his front wheel and unfortunately crashed at over 55KM/HR. He was able to get back on and finish but he was covered in road rash and will be exceptionally sore in the coming days. UAE-XRG did a strong performance by riding a negative split and finishing 9 seconds ahead of Lidl-Trek to take the provisional lead with just a few teams still out on course. Visma-Lease a Bike were the penultimate team down the ramp. They misjudged the wind direction and rode conservatively in the first part of the course and, through the second time check with 8KM to go, they were down 18 seconds. They managed to rally and finish just 8 seconds off the mark but they may be slightly disappointed with how the strategy played out. In the end, UAE-XRG did enough to take the win, 8 seconds ahead of Visma-Lease a Bike and 9 seconds ahead of Lidl-Trek. Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike takes back the Red Jersey by 8 seconds with the UAE-XRG trio of Juan Ayuso, João Almeida, and Marc Soler all tied for second. David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ slid to sixth at 16 seconds. Jayco AlUla and Ben O'Connor had the worst day of any of the GC riders. They finished in 17th at 44 seconds which puts O'Connor into 20th at 52 seconds on GC.