February 5, 2026
There are difficult days to come later in the week but none offer such an opportunity to create significant time gaps as today's ITT. Stage 2 from Carlet to Alginet is a 17KM test against the clock. The course is split evenly in thirds with flat first and last thirds. The middle second third contains an uphill and proceeding downhill. The climb is 3.1KM at 3.6% and will require perfect pacing to preserve enough energy to hold the speed for the final 8KM from the top. We can start writing quality notes in the early season form guide with today's results.
Race Summary
Storm Leonardo blew in across the Iberian peninsula causing high winds in Valencia. Barriers and the finish gantry were blown over causing the organizers to change the format of the stage. Riders were not allowed to use TT bikes and times on the line would not count towards the overall. The stage result was still up for grabs though and some riders would still have an interest in giving it a go.
Unfortunately for the host towns, the spectacle become a bit of a farce. Many of the riders just mailed it in and finished many minutes down. For those who did give it their all, we had a tough time knowing how fast any of them actually went. Live timing was non-existent and took over 5 minutes after each rider finished to know how fast they actually went. We did see that Brandon McNulty of UAE-XRG, Magnus Sheffield of Ineos, Florian Vermeersch of UAE-XRG, Mathias Vacek of Lidl-Trek and Aleksandr Vlasov of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe all set the fastest times when they crossed the line but there was the World and Olympic ITT Champion still out on course.
It became clear early on that Remco Evenepoel of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe was going for the win. He was the fastest through the intermediate check and came home with the quickest time with an average speed of 50.495KM/HR which is incredible given the road bike setup. Vlasov was second best at 8 seconds with Vacek in third at 16 seconds.