Stage 12, Thursday 3

167 km, D+ 4500m

Parts of this stage look similar to the one won by Leknessund on the 1^st week. However there are a few more serious slopes here, in the beginning of the Velefique Pass and then in the beginning of the Calar observatory’s climb . Between 2 easier stages, the GC leaders will certainly battle again here. Will it be for stage victory too, or simply far behind a breakaway?

So, there was breakaway of 30 riders. Sivakov (🇷🇺🇫🇷 UAE) tried to join it, but while the other 2 members of his counter-attack group succeeded, he didn’t. Van Aert (🇧🇪 Visma) once again disputed all of the first 3 KOM to Buitrago (🇨🇴 Bahrain), and because there are so many ‘flat climbs’ in this 2026 Vuelta, beat him each time. 🙄 Then nobody disputed him the Green jersey points…

The peloton quickly let the breakaway go, and the gap grew up to 7′30″, which meant that the young Omrzel (🇸🇮 Bahrain) got on the virtual GC podium. Movistar was just pacing around, and it was a bit strange that teams from the other top-5 guys were not acting in any way.

Movistar accelerated a bit in the first big climb. The only attack was Carapaz’ (🇪🇨 EF) doing, when the slope got easier: he quickly gained 20-30 seconds, but then the gap stabilised and he was caught before the summit.

In the second, they kept on accelerating, reducing the peloton to a small number. Then Decathlon prepared Gall🇦🇹’s attack. It didn’t work well, as Mas🇪🇸 and Roglitch🇸🇮 rather easily stuck or came up back to him. It was a bit more difficult for Carapaz🇪🇨 and Onley🇬🇧. Onley🇬🇧 had undergone a crash 20 km after the beginning of the stage, and he was dropped later: after one attack too many, his little group of 3 came back without him (a bit like Sivakov earlier in the race).

The breakaway fought for victory, as the best riders there had enough of a gap over the peloton to be safe. From the breakaway, the 2 Movistar riders and the 1 Decathlon rider dropped at calculated times to help their respective leaders behind: it was unusually well executed (it probably helps that unlike in Pogatchar/Vingegaard case, their leaders are not 3 legs above them).

Urko Berrade (🇪🇸 Kern Pharma) was the last rider able to follow Omrzel🇸🇮, after Buitrago🇨🇴 and Bisiaux🇫🇷 were dropped. He was dropped a bit later too, and had a hard time preserving his 2^nd place.

Behind, Mas🇪🇸 left Gall🇦🇹 and Roglitch🇸🇮 stunned when he attacked. His advance quickly grew, he also got the support of R. Garcia🇪🇸 coming from ahead, and reached perhaps 40-45 second. On the line, it was down to 30 seconds, Mas🇪🇸 was getting tired; we can confirm that by the fact that he couldn’t follow the sprint of Vansevenant (🇧🇪 Soudal-QS) whom he had caught a bit earlier.

Overall, it was a confirmation of the levels riders exposed in previous mountain stages. The small differences today were:

• Onley🇬🇧 loses a bit, we may blame this on his crash early in the afternoon;
• Omrzel🇸🇮 jumps to 6^th place thanks to his breakaway and good finish for the stage victory;
• Widar (🇧🇪 Lotto) lost again, he is now 12 minutes behind top-10.

Buitrago🇨🇴 could score max points in the climb before the final one, even though an attack by his own teammate Omrzel🇸🇮 followed by Bisiaux (🇫🇷 Decathlon) endangered him. Luckily, the French rider didn’t relay. And he also

Wait, I see that Lutsenko (🇰🇿 NSN) finished 4^th? I never noticed him! 🤣 I remember he was on TV at some point, but in my idea, it was somewhere else, not among the last survivors, it couldn’t be… 😄

I also see that Vine (🇦🇺 UAE) withdrew today.

Bottles resupply have become a farce. Basically nobody makes an effort any more to go and get bottles; they get them from cars which come up to where the riders are, they get them from standing suppliers in a ton of places, they get them from motorbike without even leaving their position in the group for a second. We can now see riders getting a bottle 4 times in just 1 kilometre… They just press them twice to moisten their jersey, throw them right away and ask fo another one. They throw them anywhere. Bottles are flying anywhere, they don’t care, a ton of them end up where there is no one (of course outside of ‘litter zones’), in buses, in fields. In urban or semi-urban areas, they bounce off walls and gutters and come back inside the pelotons. There are more and more incidents with suppliers.

Today, commissars finally started giving a few penalties and fine. But that’s still ridiculous compared to the number of offenses we can witness (and the number of offenses we can witness is most likely ridiculous to the number of offenses that are performed).