Enric Mas Won the Vuelta at the Fourth Attempt, Twelve Years After Contador, in the Race Pogačar Was Supposed to Win

There is a particular kind of sporting career that consists of being the second-best rider in your country's biggest race, and Enric Mas has had it. Second in 2018, second in 2021, second in 2022, each time to a rider who was simply better on the day, and each time carrying the expectation of a country that had not had a home winner of its own Grand Tour since Alberto Contador in 2014. On Sunday evening in Granada, at 31, he won it.

How it happened

It happened because of a crash that was not his. Tadej Pogačar, the five-time Tour de France winner, came to the Vuelta as the overwhelming favourite and rode like it, and by stage eight he led Mas by three minutes and fifty seconds. Then he fell, hard enough to leave the race and, later, to miss the world championships, according to NBC Sports. Mas inherited the red jersey the way nobody wants to inherit it, and the next day, on the Alto de Aitana, he did the thing that turned an inheritance into a title: he won the stage, alone, in the leader's jersey, in front of a Spanish crowd. From then on the race was his to lose, and he did not lose it. Primož Roglič, who has won this race four times and has spent a career taking it off riders who thought it was theirs, attacked where Roglič attacks. Mas lost time on stage eighteen and limited it. He arrived in Granada two minutes and fifteen seconds ahead of Roglič and two minutes forty-four ahead of Felix Gall of Austria.

Granada

The final stage was not a parade. A circuit with four laps of a 2.1-kilometre climb towards the Alhambra broke the sprinters early, Groupama-FDJ drove the second ascent, a nine-man group went clear and grew, and the general classification riders sat up a minute behind once it was clear nobody dangerous was in front. Tobias Halland Johannessen of Uno-X won the stage from Alessandro Romele and Ramses Debruyne, CyclingUpToDate reports. Wout van Aert took the points jersey, having won a stage fifteen shortened for extreme heat, Santiago Buitrago the mountains and Oscar Onley the white jersey for best young rider. Movistar, Mas's team for his entire career, won its first Grand Tour since Nairo Quintana's Vuelta in 2016.

What kind of win it was

The honest answer is: the kind that needs an asterisk and deserves not to have one. Mas did not beat Pogačar, because nobody got the chance to. He beat Roglič, which is not nothing, and he did it by riding the race that was in front of him without a mistake for two weeks, which is the thing he had failed to do three times before. Grand Tours are won by the rider who is still there at the end, and the list of riders who have inherited a lead and then been unable to hold it is long. Mas held it, won a stage in the jersey to prove he could, and closed out a three-week race under the kind of pressure that comes with being the first Spaniard in twelve years with a chance. Contador's last win was also a race the favourites did not finish. Nobody remembers that now, and in twelve years nobody will remember this.

The season has one Grand Tour left in the memory and three weeks of classics ahead. Pogačar's injuries are the story for the world championships; for the Vuelta, the story is a rider who spent eight years as the answer to a trivia question about second places and is now the answer to a different one.