Enric Mas Leads the Vuelta by Seventy-Eight Seconds and Matthew Brennan Has Won Three Stages Since the Race Left Monaco
Brennan took stage eleven into Lorca in a bunch sprint on Wednesday. Mas holds red from Primoz Roglic in a race reshaped by Tadej Pogacar's crash on stage eight.
Matthew Brennan won the eleventh stage of the Vuelta a Espana on Wednesday, a 151.3km run from Cartagena to Lorca settled in a bunch sprint, in three hours seventeen minutes and eighteen seconds. Bryan Coquard was second and Jordi Meeus third. It was Brennan's third stage win of this Vuelta after Manosque and Roquetes.
Enric Mas kept the red jersey. The Movistar rider leads Primoz Roglic by one minute eighteen seconds, Felix Gall by 1:39, Oscar Onley by 2:20, Richard Carapaz by 3:26, Mattias Skjelmose by 3:55 and Sepp Kuss by 4:09. Wout van Aert leads the points classification.
Mas took the lead on stage nine, outsprinting Onley at the top of the Alto de Aitana on 30 August. Bastien Tronchon won stage ten into Elche de la Sierra on Tuesday.
The reason a Movistar rider is leading a Grand Tour with ten days to go is what happened on 29 August. Tadej Pogacar crashed on stage eight with 32km left, near the intermediate sprint at Simat de Valldigna. He was diagnosed with concussion, a displaced fracture of the left collarbone and a stable fracture of the C7 vertebra. He was wearing red at the time and had already won three stages, including the opening time trial in Monaco. Surgery on the collarbone was delayed for concussion protocol and carried out on Monday.
This is the last Grand Tour of the season and it started outside Spain, in Monaco on 22 August. It covers 3,298.5km across 21 stages and finishes in Granada on 13 September. Stage three, from Gruissan to Font Romeu, was cancelled because of severe weather. The second rest day is on 7 September.
Stage twelve on Thursday runs 166.6km from Vera to Calar Alto with about 4,568m of climbing, and the race is expected to be decided over the final 44km of it. A lead of 1:18 is comfortable on a flat road and means very little on a mountain that long. Mas has finished on the Vuelta podium before without winning it, and the field behind him is deep enough that the first summit finish since Pogacar's exit will be the first real test of whether the classification is settled or merely paused.