Stage 8

The road

At the start

Down to the coast at Xeraco

Valdelinares left the top of the classification alone — Pogačar by 3:50 from Mas, 4:50 from Roglič — and it took a Norwegian to end UAE's run of stage wins. Luca Van Boven does not start after his crash yesterday, the seventh man home. Today comes back to sea level: 166 kilometres past Valencia to Xeraco, with only the Puerto de Barx, twenty-two out, between the sprinters and their first chance since Roquetes.

How it was won

1. 128 km to go

   Fernández's day ends at the sprint

   Sinuhé Fernández has been out on his own since kilometre twelve, five and a half minutes at his best, one minute with fifty to run, and the flat road to Xeraco finally takes it all back. He is swept up just in time for the sprint at Simat de Valldigna, where Wout van Aert slips out of the bunch to take the twenty points and stretch his lead in green.

2. 226 km to go

   Pogačar goes down

   There is barely time to note the points before the race leader is on the tarmac. Riding near the front on the run towards the Puerto de Barx, Pogačar swerves in the bunch, touches another rider and hits the ground hard on his left shoulder and the left side of his face. He is treated at the roadside for several minutes and then climbs into the ambulance, arm in a sling — eight days in red, and a Vuelta he had all but won ended in a straight line on a flat road.

3. 322 km to go

   The peloton climbs in silence

   Nobody in the bunch yet knows how bad it is, and nobody wants to find out by racing. The only climb of the day goes by slowly and without a single attack, out of respect for a jersey that is now in an ambulance, and Van Aert leads the way over the top for Visma. Xabier Azparren goes over with him and keeps riding, twenty seconds clear onto the descent.

4. 4At the line

   Coquard, at thirty-four

   Azparren holds it almost the whole way into Xeraco before Ineos close him down with two kilometres left, and by then the peloton has lost five more riders to a crash at ten to go. Visma set up Brennan and lose him in the shuffle; a mass pile-up unfolds just behind the lead-out; Laporte peels off at a hundred and fifty metres and Pedersen goes. Bryan Coquard, twelve years after his first Grand Tour and still without a stage from any of them, comes off Meeus's wheel and takes the last fifty metres by a photograph.

The result