Stage 9

The road

At the start

Mas in red, and the hardest day

The red jersey changed hands in an ambulance yesterday. Pogačar is out of the race, and Enric Mas — three times a runner-up here, never once its leader — wakes up wearing it, a minute clear of Roglič and 1:11 of Gall. Today is the hardest day of this Vuelta by a distance: 189 kilometres, six categorised climbs, five thousand metres of climbing, and twenty-two kilometres of the Alto de Aitana at the end of it.

How it was won

1. 1152 km to go

   Five clear over the Tàrbena

   The hardest stage of the race — five thousand metres of climbing, more than any other day — opens with everybody attacking at once, Van Aert and Lutsenko and Buitrago and Kron among them. Over the Puerto de Tàrbena it is Pavel Sivakov, out there for a UAE team riding its first day without a leader, with Lutsenko, Kron, Mackellar and Romele for company.

2. 2115 km to go

   Two breaks become one on the Miserat

   Forty kilometres in, the gaps are still measured in seconds, and it takes until fifty-five for a ten-strong chase to bridge and make fifteen at the front. A dozen more clip away on the road to the Puerto de El Miserat, five kilometres at ten per cent, and the two groups fuse over the top into something Movistar are content to let ride at three minutes. Buitrago leads the race over it with the mountains jersey in mind.

3. 349 km to go

   Romele alone over Benifallim

   Buitrago collects again on the Tollos and again on the Tudons, thirteen points and then three more, and takes the virtual lead of the mountains classification. Then Alessandro Romele tears the break open on the valley road and crosses the Puerto de Benifallim thirty seconds up on Camprubí. Six minutes below him Decathlon come to the front of the peloton and begin riding for Felix Gall.

4. 423 km to go

   Onto twenty-two kilometres of Aitana

   Romele, Sivakov and Camprubí hit the Alto de Aitana with a minute and twenty in hand and five minutes on a peloton Decathlon are burning down one rider at a time. Jordan Labrosse finishes a colossal turn with fourteen kilometres left and hands to Scotson, then Bisiaux, then Riccitello, then Mühlberger with Gall on his wheel, and the gap falls by a minute and a half in the time it takes to say it.

5. 57 km to go

   Gall attacks, and attacks, and nothing gives

   Sivakov goes clear of his last companion inside ten kilometres and rides towards an inevitable catch. Behind him Mühlberger almost sprints to the seven-kilometre mark before Gall makes his move; the Austrian goes again at six; Carapaz counters at five and a half; Gall goes a third time at three point eight. Every one of them is answered, and every one of them is answered by the man in red.

6. 63 km to go

   Mas, on his first day in red

   Then Enric Mas stops covering and goes. Three point two kilometres from the top, on his first day in the leader's jersey and four years since his last victory, Mas rides away from the men who have spent twenty minutes trying to take it off him. Only Oscar Onley can follow. Gall, who moved four times, has nothing left and is thirty-five seconds down before the two-kilometre banner; Roglič comes to within touching distance of the wheel and cannot find the last metre of it.

7. 7At the line

   The jersey gives you wings

   Mas leads the two-up sprint out himself and holds the front all the way to the line, beating Onley on the Aitana for a stage win in red that Movistar have waited half a decade for. Roglič is third at twelve seconds, Gall further back, and the lead is out to 1:18.

The result