Stage 16

The road

At the start

West to the Atlantic, and no climbs

The heat has cut one stage short and cooked another, and the classification has not moved since La Pandera: Mas by 2:06 from Gall, 2:10 from Roglič. Thirty-four are home. Today the Vuelta goes west for the flattest day it owns — 189 kilometres across Huelva to the Atlantic at La Rábida, not one categorised climb on it, thirty-six degrees forecast — and the sprinters who are left get the first of two straight chances.

How it was won

1. 168 km to go

   Thirty-six degrees, and the gap goes

   Five riders have been up the road since the Huelva flatlands and not one of them has won anything all season; two forty-five is the most Visma ever let them have. They take the points at Villarrasa and then the sky does the rest — thirty-six degrees, no cloud, not one tree-lined kilometre on the whole road — and with sixty-eight to go the advantage is already under a minute.

2. 2At the line

   Brennan's fourth, off Van Aert's wheel

   The catch comes on the wide roads swinging out to the Atlantic, Red Bull first and then Visma again, and after Mazagón the race turns back along the coast into eleven kilometres of ocean crosswind that never quite bites. Uno-X come up the right-hand side with four and a half to go and the bunch spreads across the full width of the road. Then Wout van Aert does what he has done all month: takes the front, holds it, and delivers Matthew Brennan into clear air. Coquard and Braet get the other two steps. It is the fourth stage of this Vuelta for a twenty-one-year-old riding his first.

The result