Stage 10

The road

At the start

Alicante, and Evenepoel's home roads

Remco Evenepoel leads Enric Mas by 1:12 and Primož Roglič by 1:53, and today is the day he built this Vuelta around: 31 flat kilometres from Elche to Alicante, on roads he trains on every winter, the only stage he bothered to reconnoitre. Mas has never come near him against the clock. Sepp Kuss and Wout Poels did not start yesterday — nineteen riders are out and COVID has taken most of them.

How it was won

1. 121 km to go

   Twenty-one seconds after 10km

   The GC men are packed within a few seconds of each other at the first checkpoint — Sivakov, Yates, Roglič and Mas all inside three seconds. Then Evenepoel sweeps through twenty-one seconds up on his own teammate Cavagna and lays waste to all of it.

2. 210 km to go

   Still pulling away

   At the second checkpoint the gap to Cavagna is thirty-six seconds, with Roglič fractionally behind, and Mas and Rodríguez just under a minute down. The red jersey is not fading — he is accelerating.

3. 3At the line

   Forty-eight seconds, at 55.7kph

   Evenepoel finishes off a ride that averages 55.658kph and nearly catches Mas on the road. Forty-eight seconds ahead of anyone else, Cavagna third for a QuickStep one-three, and a first Grand Tour stage win to go with the red jersey.

The result