Stage 18

The road

At the start

Roglič's day, 32 kilometres to Jerez

Two flat days have left the race exactly where La Pandera put it: Mas, then Gall at 2:06, then Roglič at 2:10. Today is the stage this Vuelta drew for the Slovenian — 32 kilometres between two towns of the Sherry Triangle, El Puerto de Santa María to Jerez de la Frontera, barely a rise on it. A four-time winner of this race against a man who has never won a Grand Tour, with two mountain stages still to come.

How it was won

1. 121 km to go

   Twenty-two seconds at the first check

   Eleven kilometres in, on a road blown inland by a strong tailwind, Primož Roglič is twenty-two seconds up on Enric Mas — and on Felix Gall by exactly the same margin. Held to Jerez, that rate is worth more than a minute. It would not take red off a man two minutes and ten clear, but it would leave the Slovenian close enough that the two mountain stages after it decide the Vuelta rather than merely decorate it.

2. 210 km to go

   Mas rallies in the middle third

   It does not hold. Somewhere in the middle of the Sherry Triangle the race leader finds the rhythm he did not have out of El Puerto de Santa María, and at the second checkpoint he is twenty-seven seconds down — five more than at the first, over eleven kilometres, which is nothing like the rate this started at. Gall, given the same eleven kilometres, goes the other way.

3. 3At the line

   Küng wins it; Mas keeps it

   Stefan Küng throws himself down every gentle descent and commits to every bend, twice almost too much, and stops the clock in Jerez de la Frontera at 35:22 — two seconds faster than Callum Thornley, eight faster than João Almeida. It is the second Grand Tour stage win of his career, and the first came on the final day of the 2024 Vuelta, which makes this the only race that has ever given him one. Behind him the race that matters is decided by six seconds: that is all Mas concedes over the closing third, into the headwind, on the day Roglič had circled since Monaco. The Slovenian takes thirty-three seconds out of the red jersey and second place off Gall, and Mas goes to the mountains still leading by a minute thirty-seven.

The result