Stage 7

The road

At the start

A minute's silence, then six climbs

Word comes from Oslo before the start: King Harald V has died in the night, and the race stands a minute's silence in Vall d'Alba, Uno-X Mobility's riders in black armbands. Then 150 kilometres inland and three and a half thousand metres of climbing to the summit at Aramón Valdelinares. Castelló shuffled everything behind Pogačar — Mas second at 3:34, Roglič down to 4:21 — and Tarling, third in Monaco, is gone.

How it was won

1. 1148 km to go

   Van Aert attacks off the flag

   The flag drops in Vall d'Alba and the very first rider to move is Wout van Aert, which is not what anyone expects on a day with six ranked climbs and a summit finish at the end of it. Andreas Leknessund and Milan Vader go with him, and the three have a gap before the peloton has decided whether to care.

2. 2120 km to go

   A breathless first hour

   Vader cannot hold the pace the two in front are setting and drifts away. Behind him Lutsenko, Zana and Bisiaux tear clear and start hauling the gap down from forty-five seconds, with a dozen more — Johannessen, Dunbar, Brenner, Bilbao — coming across in their wake, and the peloton never further off any of it than a minute.

3. 398 km to go

   Five settle over El Remolcador

   It takes the first real climb of the day to stop the fighting. Over the Puerto El Remolcador the front of the race has resolved into five — Leknessund and Van Aert, out there since the gun, with Dunbar, Lutsenko and Johannessen for company — and behind them the peloton finally sits up.

4. 445 km to go

   The GC group lets it go

   By the Puerto de Fuente de Rubielos the gap is past six minutes and still opening, and for once the red jersey shows no interest in it at all. Pogačar is riding to keep what he has. The stage has been handed over, and the five in front know exactly what they have been given.

5. 58 km to go

   Johannessen lets the wheel go

   On the climb to Valdelinares the two Norwegians ride the other three off the wheel, and then Johannessen — the strongest climber in the group by his own teammate's reckoning — deliberately lets Leknessund's wheel go with seven and a half kilometres left. Van Aert chases it the whole way up the mountain and never gets any nearer.

6. 6At the line

   A royal success

   Leknessund crosses alone at Aramón Valdelinares with a black armband on his sleeve, Norway's first Vuelta stage win since Hushovd in 2010, on the morning his king died. Johannessen follows at thirty-four seconds and Van Aert at forty-seven. Pogačar comes in nineteenth at 4:23, first of the GC men as ever; Gall and Mas take twenty-three and thirteen seconds out of Roglič, Kuss and Onley behind him, and Carapaz, dropped in the last kilometres, slides from fourth to seventh.

The result