Place Name: Saliencia - Límite Provincia De León
Address: Saliencia - Límite Provincia De León, 24144 San Emiliano, León, Spain
Details: September 6, 2025
The course designers showed no mercy for the fourteenth stage after such a difficult day yesterday. They lined up another 4,000M of elevation today with a 136KM stage from Avilés to the summit of La Farrapona. Much like yesterday, the first two-thirds of the stage are relatively straightforward but there is one 6KM climb to navigate before the intermediate sprint in Entragu with 46KM to go. The Puertu de San Llaurienzu, the hardest climb of the stage, starts in Entragu and climbs for 10KM at an average of 8.5%. A 10KM descent is the last reprieve the riders will get because from 24KM to go, the road go up all the way to the finish. The classified part of La Farrapona begins with 17KM to go after a dragging valley road that follows the Somiedo River upstream. The lower slopes of La Farrapona are not too bad but with 7KM to go, it ramps up and averages 8.5% from there to the line. If a break can get established early, they could make it to the finish but since the stage is so short, that might be hard to accomplish.
Just over 20 riders broke clear after about 20KM of racing. The gap quickly got out to 3 minutes as Visma-Lease a Bike took control of the front of the peloton. The break worked well to the Alto Tenebreo and, with Visma-Lease a Bike setting a more moderate pace in the bunch, the gap was 5 minutes by the top with 66.5KM to go. Through the Peñas Juntas Gorge with 52KM to go, the break had extended their lead to over 6 minutes and were looking more and more likely to battle for the stage win.
UAE-XRG took over control of the peloton going into the Puertu de San Llaurienzu and started to chip away at the gap. They ramped up the pace and dropped Egan Bernal of Ineos and Giulio Ciccone of Lidl-Trek. With 2.5KM to climb, fewer than 20 riders remained in the favorites group and the gap to the break was down to 4 minutes. Half of the break was still together at the top with 34KM to go as Bruno Armirail of Decathlon AG2R pushed on to preserve as much of a gap to continue his chutes and ladders in the GC. James Shaw of EF-Education EasyPost attacked over the top for a head start for the steep descent.
Shaw was reabsorbed by the bottom but a new group split away from the break with Marc Soler of UAE-XRG and Johannes Staune-Mittet of Decathlon AG2R. They started La Farrapona with about 10 seconds on the rest of the break and 3 minutes to the peloton. Soler attacked and went solo after just 1KM while the peloton was being driven hard by his teammates behind. UAE-XRG continued to ride a pace that was hard enough to discourage attacks but not hard enough to reduce the favorites. With 3KM to go, Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe sent Giulio Pellizzari to the front to increase the pace.
Pellizzari rode until around 1,500M to go when Jai Hindley came around and attacked. Jonas Vingegaard and João Almeida were able to respond and the gap to the rest was expanding. Meanwhile, up the road, Soler came across the line in his familiar labored style to take the seventh stage win for UAE-XRG of the race. A few moments later, Almeida accelerated with 150M to go which distanced Hindley but Vingegaard was composed. The Dane came around Almeida on the line to take second place as well as few bonus seconds over Almeida. Hindley was fourth, just 4 seconds down in Vingegaard with the rest of the GC favorites all within 20 seconds.
With Ciccone and Bernal firmly out of the GC hunt, the rest of the riders from 8th to 15th moved up but the top seven remains the same as this morning, with just slightly larger time gaps to Vingegaard.
Tags: La Vuelta Ciclista a España, 2025, September, Stage 14, La Vuelta Ciclista a España 2025, Avilés, La Farrapona, Bruno Armirail, James Shaw, Marc Soler, Johannes Staune-Mittet, Giulio Pellizzari, Jai Hindley, Jonas Vingegaard, João Almeida