Enric Mas finally wins a Grand Tour after Pogačar’s Vuelta ends in a crash

For most of a decade, Enric Mas was the nearly man of the Vuelta a España. He finished second in 2018, in 2021 and in 2022. On 13 September in Granada, at the end of the 81st edition, he finally stood on the top step.

Mas, riding for Movistar, won by 2 minutes 15 seconds from Slovenia’s Primož Roglič, with Austria’s Felix Gall third, 2:44 back. Ecuador’s Richard Carapaz was fourth and the American Sepp Kuss, who climbed from eleventh to fifth on the final mountain stage, completed the top five. Mas is the first Spanish winner of the race since Alberto Contador in 2014, according to ProCyclingUK.

His victory will always be linked to what happened on stage 8.

The crash that changed the race

Tadej Pogačar arrived at the Vuelta, which started in Monaco on 22 August, as the overwhelming favourite. A month earlier he had won his fifth Tour de France. He won three of the opening stages and built a lead of more than three minutes.

Near the end of stage 8 he was caught in a crash. He tried to continue but could not, and was taken to hospital. He was later found to have suffered a concussion, a broken collarbone that required surgery and a fractured C7 vertebra. It was the first time in his career that he had abandoned a Grand Tour. On 5 September his UAE Team Emirates XRG team announced that he would not race again in 2026 (ruling him out of the world championships, where he had won the road race in each of the previous two years) and that he had extended his contract until 2032.

Mas was second overall at the time. He inherited the red jersey, won stage 9 the following day, and defended his lead through the final two weeks to Granada, where Norway’s Tobias Johannessen won the closing stage.

A Vuelta of other stories

Roglič’s second place came three weeks after he was hit by a car while training, according to Wikipedia’s account of the race.

Belgium’s Wout van Aert won the points classification, two stages and the overall combativity award, while his Visma–Lease a Bike teammate Matthew Brennan won five stages, more than any other rider. Colombia’s Santiago Buitrago won the mountains classification.

And Oscar Onley of Netcompany INEOS, sixth overall, won the young rider classification, the first British rider to do so, according to ProCyclingUK.

How to read the win

It is tempting to put an asterisk next to a Grand Tour won after the favourite crashed out. Cycling history does not usually do so. Three weeks of racing still have to be survived, and Mas had to defend the lead against Roglič, a four-time winner of this race, over the hardest mountains of the second and third weeks.

For Mas, who has spent his career one place short, the result answers a question that had followed him for years. For Pogačar, the season that brought a record-equalling fifth Tour ended in a hospital in Spain, a reminder that in a sport this fast, a single crash can matter more than any amount of form.