Stage 15

The road

At the start

230km, and no Portugal

Tim Wellens took his second stage out of the break and the top four are exactly where they were: Roglič, Carapaz at 39 seconds, Carthy at 47, Dan Martin at 1:42. Today should have finished in Porto — the pandemic shut the border, so it was redrawn to end at Puebla de Sanabria instead. It is 230 kilometres long, has 4,000 metres of climbing in it, and almost no flat road at all.

How it was won

1. 131 km to go

   A long day into the wind

   After 230 attritional kilometres into a stiff headwind, the peloton grinds toward an uphill finish in Puebla de Sanabria, tired legs everywhere.

2. 2At the line

   Philipsen's first Grand Tour win

   Jasper Philipsen powers up the finishing rise to take the biggest win of his career, a maiden Grand Tour stage after a brutally long day.

The result