Today's final catwalk in Madrid is missing but Simon Yates has in fact won the Vuelta giving Great Britain its third success in the same season in the three major stage races of the international cycling calendar, a fantastic treble in the same season, never achieved by anyone else nation, moreover with three different riders – Froome the Giro, Thomas the Tour, Yates the Vuelta – demonstrating an absolute superiority, so astonishing if one considers that until 2011 none of His Majesty's cyclists had ever won either the Giro or the Tour nor Vuelta. Also yesterday in the last mountain stage, short but very tough due to the differences in height to overcome, Yates proved to be the strongest, master of the race even when he found himself alone without companions, ready to repel any attack on his red jersey. chasing and catching up with Eric Mas both Lopez and Quintana, who in turn had stretched on the last two ascents of the stage.
It was Lopez and Mas – with the permission of Yates who was now sure he had the Vuelta in his pocket – who fought for the stage victory: in the sprint in Canolich, on top of the Collada de la Gallina, it was the Spaniard who got the better of the Colombian from Astana, for both there was the satisfaction of getting on the podium behind Yates, Mas second and Lopez third, ousting both Valverde and Krujiswick from the places of honor. Yates, now sure of the new king of Spain, was content with third place 23” from Mas ahead of Pinot and Uran by about half a minute. Defeat that has the dimensions of a defeat for Movistar which saw the failure of the attack plan with Quintana, who was to act as a point of support for Valverde: a total fiasco with Valverde who had the lead in his legs and with Quintana, also far away a relative of the Condor who won the Vuelta in 2016, who resigned himself to following the fate of the Murciano, in a confusion of roles that heavily penalized the action of the Movistars. The final classification, shaken in the positions behind Yates, sees Valverde exit the podium slipping from second to fifth place at 4'28" from the red jersey while Quintana, also overtaken by Pinot and Uran, ended up in eighth position at 6' 51". Kruijswijck, although the protagonist of a decent stage – seventh at 1'15” from Mas – was unable to defend the podium, passing from third to fourth place at 2'54” from Yates.
