Stage 20

The road

At the start

A mini Liège into Santiago

The last road stage was drawn by Óscar Pereiro on his own Galician roads and billed as a small Liège–Bastogne–Liège: five classified climbs, narrow and steep, three thousand metres of climbing in the second half alone and a hard ramp into Santiago de Compostela. Roglič holds 2:30 over Mas and 2:53 over López. Only a time trial follows it.

How it was won

1. 176 km to go

   Ineos tear into it

   Sivakov ramps the pace on the second climb and real damage is done: the peloton is down to thirty and the break's eleven-minute cushion is cut to six. Trentin attacks over the top to force a proper selection out front.

2. 256 km to go

   Yates makes the decisive move

   Bernal has already kicked twice when Yates jumps, and this is the one that sticks. Mäder goes with it, Roglič hits out to chase, Mas and Haig follow — and an elite group is up the road with López and Bernal on the wrong side of it.

3. 345 km to go

   López stops racing

   Down at sea level in Baiona the gap is approaching three minutes and the Colombian's podium is gone. Having dragged the chase alone with no help from anyone, he suddenly quits it entirely — and within kilometres he is no longer in the group at all, threatening to abandon the Vuelta on the spot.

4. 426 km to go

   Gibbons alone over the Prado

   The South African tops the penultimate climb fifty seconds up on a chase group that has spent the whole ascent attacking itself, then uses the descent to push it back out to ninety.

5. 56 km to go

   The favourites come to a halt

   Yates kicks, Roglič shuts it down, Yates kicks again — and then, on the flatter middle section, the elite quartet stop racing altogether and look at each other. Twice they haul back the leaders and twice they let the tension drain away.

6. 62 km to go

   Champoussin slips through

   With 1,500 metres left, during yet another standstill among the men racing for the podium, Bardet goes through and Champoussin follows him — and finds twenty seconds on a little downhill under the flamme rouge. The road kicks up viciously again and the Frenchman bursts out of the saddle and holds every one of them off.

7. 7At the line

   Santiago de Compostela

   Champoussin takes the biggest win of his career out of the wreckage of a GC standoff. Haig has the podium, Yates has moved up, and López has gone home.

The result