Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2026 Vuelta a España Stage 20

Introduction

Pro cycling has become pretty boring over the last couple of years due to the dominance of a few key riders, especially Tadej Pogacar. But this Vuelta got really exciting when Pogacar crashed out. The second most dominant stage racer of our era, Jonas Vingegaard, didn’t start, still getting over injuries sustained in the Tour de France. So this race has been oddly exciting, and we head into today’s queen stage with only 1:37 separating race leader Enric Mas (Movistar Team) from Primoz Roglic (Red Bull - Bora - Hansgrohe). And today is by far the hardest of the entire Vuelta, with three Category 1 climbs and then, at the finish, the only “Especial” (e.g., Hors Catégorie) climb on offer this year. So buckle up, caffeinate, and let’s go!

Vuelta a España Stage 20 – La Calahorra to Collado Del Alguacil

As I join the action, the riders have just over 60 kilometers left and are nearing the summit of the Category 1 climb to Puerto De El Purche. Why is it not “Del Purche”? Two reasons. First, “El Purche” is a formal name so it doesn’t get contracted. Second, “Del Purche” would make Americans think of “Del Taco,” which is distracting.

A breakaway has eight minutes on the red jersey group, and my cat is yowling pitifully for her breakfast. Wout van Aert (Team Visma - Lease a Bike) goes for the KOM points and—yikes, it’s super close!—barely takes them ahead of Pau Miquel (Bahrain Victorious).

Back in the main bunch, Richard Carapaz (EF Education - Easypost) attacks! He’s sitting fourth on GC, and would obviously love to take enough time out of Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) to overtake him in the GC and finish on the podium. But Carapaz is pulled back in the time I took to type that.

So this is interesting: the overall leader in the KOM, Santiago Buitrago, didn’t make the breakaway. So he can’t contest any of the KOM points, and if Van Aert were to take all of them (I know, big “if”) he could end up winning that competition. Imagine losing your polka-dot jersey on the last day, and to a big guy like Wout (or “Woof” in my wife’s approximation, the one time she talked about pro cycling). So when Miquel contested that last KOM, it wasn’t for himself, it was to deprive Van Aert of maximum points, to defend Buitrago’s overall lead.

Now (like ten minutes later, as I had to make pour-over coffee and pet my weird old cat so she’d eat), Van Aert takes the intermediate sprint to seal his victory in the points competition for this Vuelta.

The breakaway is now nearing the penultimate climb, the Puerto de El Duque. One interesting development that they’re recapping now is that earlier in the race Sepp Kuss (Team Visma - Lease a Bike) attacked the red jersey group and now has about two minutes. If he goes really well on the final two climbs—perhaps with Van Aert dropping back to help him—he could move well into the top ten overall (he started today in 11th), possibly all the way up to fifth. This would be a nice feat after his heartbreaking loss in Stage 20 of this year’s Tour de France, when he seemed to be cruising to victory but crashed twice on the final descent.

Amost nine minutes later, the GC group hits the climb. Red Bull - Bora – Hansgrohe masses on the front for Roglic.

It’s odd, there’s apparently some chase group between the leaders and the red jersey group, but we’re not getting any footage. And I haven’t seen Kuss a single time, he’s just apparently floating out there somewhere, now 2:30 ahead of the red jersey group. And that group is seriously depleted so who knows how much time Kuss has on the rest of the top ten. Perhaps a bunch of cameramen and motorcycle  drivers got laid off. Maybe their management thought AI could do this, perhaps with simulated footage. I’m picturing some unpaid intern feeding prompts into a GenAI chatbot: “Create video footage of Sepp Kuss pedaling up the Puerto de El Duque by himself, visibly suffering but eyes forward, focused. And don’t give him giant pecs.”

The breakaway has fractured, with three leaders now: Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step), who heroically bridged up to this breakaway; Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility); and Ramses DeBruyne (Alpecin-Premier Tech). If the situation doesn’t change, they’ll take all (or at least most) of the KOM points and Van Aert’s KOM aspirations are scuttled. Which is fine. A guy that big shouldn’t take the KOM; that would turn the competition into a bit of a joke—more a variation on the points competition than a reward for actual climbers.

Carapaz attacks again!

Kind of an odd attack: instead of being set up by his teammate, Carapaz seems unaware of him. In fact, what is his teammate even doing there? It looks like he’s signing some sort of receipt being held by that motorcyclist. There is so much more to this sport than meets the eye.

Gall easily handles the attack. It really doesn’t look like Carapaz has the legs to take two minutes out of him today.

Dang, this red jersey group is down to just five riders: the top four overall plus Carapaz’s teammate Juan Felipe Rodriguez, or “JF-Rod” as nobody calls him—yet. (You read it here first!)

Oh my, now Carapaz is starting to go off the back and Gall is right with him, probably figuring he has no reason to try to hang with the top three and just needs to “keep his enemy closer,” as the saying goes. But the rest of this group doesn’t seem to have much incentive to drop them.

Now the red jersey group is just totally chilling as the GC leaders eye each other. Bruno Armirail (Team Visma - Lease a Bike) is able to catch up to them.

Carapaz attacks again (he does this so much, I’m not bothering with an exclamation point, much less a photo) and the three others react. Armirail is dropped again, at least for now. They scoop up some rando from the breakaway and then Carapaz attacks again. The commentators just called this “cat and mouse,” which is a predictable utterance but honestly not that apropos. Sure, a cat will play with a mouse, especially once it’s wounded, but Carapaz isn’t playing, not really. He’d much rather kill these guys than keep them alive to play with them. It’s a matter of intent. Also, unlike a cat and a mouse, they are of the same species. It’s only Pogacar who isn’t, and he’s not here.

One of Mas’s henchmen, Ivan Romeo, has dropped back from the breakaway to help his leader. Note that when we’re looking for a synonym for “teammate” we can say “henchmen” but not “minion.” I think the “Despicable Me” movies have pretty much  ruined “minion” for a good while as we now picture silly little yellow goggly-eyed dudes. Kind of how Disney’s “Fantasia” ruined a beautiful piece of classical music, Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours,” by associating it with an animated dancing hippo.

So as it stands, this leading trio has almost ten minutes on the red jersey sextet. (“Huh huh … he said ‘sex.’”) About half a minute back is Miquel; then there’s a chase group another minute behind and who cares who’s in it; and then about three minutes behind that we (reportedly) have Van Aert and Kuss working together. (Still no footage of them.) So if Kuss keeps riding this well, he’ll leap to fifth overall on GC, and if he goes really well I suppose it’s possible he could catch these leaders. Their gap is 4:28 but it’s a really long climb, 11 kilometers left.

Dang, Gall misses his feed!

It’s pretty scary missing your feed, especially when you know you need the calories. In my last collegiate national championship road race, the person assigned to our Berkeley team’s feeds somehow flaked entirely. Fortunately, my brother was on the sideline with a cooler of bottles, supporting his Cal Poly team. I yelled, “Give me a bottle!” and—he didn’t! He was more loyal to his damn college than his own brother! Later he actually defended this position! Fortunately the laps weren’t that long, and the next time through I literally ripped a bottle right out of my brother’s hand. I’m still fuming over that episode, 36 years later. (This interlude brought to you by Gatorade … is it in you?)

Another breakaway rider has dropped back, Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull - Bora - Hansgrohe), to help Roglic.

It’s getting interesting: James Shaw (EF Education - Easypost ) has also dropped back from the breakaway, to drive tempo in the red jersey group—not to set Carapaz up for an attack, but just to keep Kuss from taking too much time and displacing Carapaz in the overall.

And finally we get some footage—or perhaps it’s a deepfake?—of the Kuss group. They’ve caught a bunch of breakaway orphans, including Jorgen Nordhagen, another of Kuss’s thugs.

In the breakaway, Landa attacks! He looks great!

He instantly opens a giant gap. Dang, Johannessen is way off the back. And DeBruyne … he’s nowhere, he’s gone, he’s a cipher, a shadow, a ghost, a nonentity, a wraith, a lack. Nobody will remember that he was even here today.

Landa is flying but Johannessen hasn’t given up. They both seem puzzled: Landa looks back, as if wondering “where did he go?” and Johannessen is scratching his head (well, the back of his neck since he’s wearing a helmet) as if wondering, “What just happened?”

So, Kuss started today just over six minutes behind Carapaz; now he’s about 5:30 ahead on the road with around five kilometers to go. It’s just possible he could get enough time to move into fourth overall … it will have something to do with how much the GC battle for first heats up. If Gall or Roglic makes a huge attack and Carapaz can hang, that would surely help the Ecuadorian … unless he’s too fried from his ceaseless attacks. I’ll bet he’s regretting those now.

Mas has two teammates in this group now, setting tempo on the front. Maybe they’re starting to worry about Kuss, too. I’ll bet Carapaz is silently cheering them on, and Roglic is thinking, “You bastards.”

Now Red Bull - Bora - Honsgrohe is setting tempo for Roglic and he’s still thinking, “You bastards.”

Wow, Fisher-Black completely detonates and goes out the back as if shot from a cannon.

With just over three kilometers to go, Landa is looking completely solid. Unless he randomly cracks, he’s got the stage win. He’s climbing in the drops like a boss.

It appears Van Aert has finally blown. So Kuss just has Nordhagen pacing him. Kuss looked like he was struggling just a bit, a few minutes ago, when Van Aert was drilling it on the front of the group. The gap to the red jersey group is dropping a bit now. It appears Kuss will have to settle for fifth overall, but hey—jumping six places in one stage is still pretty impressive.

The GC group overtakes Van Aert. He just watches them go by, being a true gentleman. Had he grown up on the mean streets, he’d probably be crashing Carapaz right now.

Kuss hands his bottle to Nordhagen—“Here, you take this, it’s too heavy.”

PeacockTV (or “the cock” in common parlance) blocks screen grabs so I have to snap photos of the screen with my phone, which is why they’re so blurry and awful. So as an experiment, in post-production, I had ChatGPT sharpen up the above photo for me:

Gosh, it did a great job, except it just guessed about who is handing up the bottle and gave him a generic face. That’s not going to do; at least with the blurry photo you were free to imagine it’s Sepp Kuss, and there wasn’t obvious tampering with the photo, which of course causes an unpleasant feeling of deception. So much for that.

Romeo is doing a kickass job for Mas.

Landa is clearly suffering. He’s pretty old, like 36, and has raced professionally for 15 years. How many gymnasts can still achieve glory at that age? Most NFL players are in wheelchairs by then.

Gall attacks the GC group!

Roglic absolutely can’t respond, nor can Carapaz. I doubt Gall can take enough time to overtake Roglic on GC; he needs 1:24. But with Carapaz and Roglic isolated and not going that well, they could start to lose more time to Kuss.

Look at this, Mas is having a hard time closing the gap!

Landa is closing in on the finish line. I think he’s got this, mainly because he’s on a Specialized bike. They practically pedal themselves. (Note: I was not compensated in any way for saying this. Also, that Gatorade thing above? Pure malarkey.)

I’ve never seen a team car so closely following a rider. I reckon his team director is in his ear saying, “Go faster or we’ll run your ass over!”

Landa has the win. As he crosses the line it really looks like he’s suffering too much even to savor the victory. It fact this looks more like a gallstone being passed. Does it hurt as much to pass Gall? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Landa pioneers a new victory salute: the “I can’t bear to watch.” This would be a dangerous salute at the end of a sprint stage.

Johannessen is weaving as he makes his way over the line for second place.

Gall is solo … Mas can’t hang with him (but doesn’t need to, either).

Behind, among random breakaway stragglers, Kuss is going all-out, trying to grow that gap over Carapaz.

We don’t have any splits between Kuss and Carapaz, there just aren’t enough camera bikes. Which begs a question: how much does even Carapaz know? He’s just in no-man’s land, no idea how far ahead Kuss is, just grinding out whatever pace he can, hoping for the best.

Now Nordhagen paces Kuss to the line and he’s either cheering him on or bawling him out, I can’t tell which—just a lot of gesticulations.

And now Gall crosses the line. He didn’t attack early enough to change his GC prospects, which is almost as regrettable as his dorky sunglasess.

Not everyone appreciates my harsh sartorial judgments. A cycling friend told me once, “Nothing looks dorky when you win.” Okay, first of all, that’s completely untrue (anyone can look like a dork), and second, Gall didn’t win. But he did cement his podium spot for the overall.

Mas crosses the line about twenty seconds behind Gall. It appears that the chin strap on his helmet has spontaneously failed and he must hold his helmet on. Either that or this is a gesture of some kind, perhaps related to the facepalm? Indicating general disbelief at how hard this stage was?

Just over half a minute passes and now Roglic crosses the line. He limited his losses to Gall today and held on to his second place overall, which isn’t bad since a) he had a bad crash in training not so long ago, and b) he’s even older than Landa. He looks relieved: not just at successfully defending second overall, but that his children are still far too young to be thinking of putting him in a home.

Carapaz comes in all by his lonesome, hanging on to fourth overall but looking pretty blown.

They’re interviewing Landa.

INTERVIEWER: It’s been eleven years since you won a stage of the Vuelta, and we’d frankly given up on you.

LANDA: I feel happy, this was something I was looking for for a long time, finally I win again. It’s fortunate, it’s been really hot, today was my last chance.

INTERVIEWER: You just went two entire sentences without thanking your team. I’m pretty sure you’ll get cancelled for this.

LANDA: Oh no. This just went from being my best day ever to probably the worst. Could we start the interview over?

INTERVIEWER: Sorry, there’s no time for that.

LANDA: Could I claim dementia?

INTERVIEWER: It’s worth a shot, but the way you played the tactics today, that’s not going to be very credible. I recommend you dismiss this entire interview as a deepfake.

LANDA: Ooh, that’s good!

Here is the stage result.

And here is the new GC.

I guess they haven’t figured out tenth place yet ... riders are still trickling in. The way the peloton exploded today, it could be a while.

Now they’re interviewing Enric Mas.

INTERVIEWER: You seem to now have this Vuelta in the bag. Where are you gonna go after tomorrow’s stage?

MAS: I was just counting the kilometers and my feeling was super, so super good, I won because the team did everything for me.

INTERVIEWIER: I was baiting you, hoping you’d reflexively say “I’m going to Disneyland!” But you’re clearly a consummate professional, mentioning your team more or less instantly. You can live another day, scorn free, in the public eye. Well done.

Full confession: I was so displeased with the blurry photo of Mas, I had ChapGPT clean it up, and while I was at it I made some other adjustments. You’re going to have to get used to this kind of thing ... GenAI isn’t going away.

Well, unless something truly unusual happens in tomorrow’s final stage—and I for one will not be up early enough to see it—that’s all for this year’s Vuelta a España. Check back in a month because, unless I forget, I’ll cover the Paris-Tours classic. Thanks for reading, and I’d like to take this moment to thank all my teammates for making this coverage possible.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXXII

Introduction

This is the thirty-second installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, Volume XXVI is here, Volume XXVII is here, Volume XXVIII is here, Volume XXIX is here, Volume XXX is here, and Volume XXXI is here.

What are Bits & Bobs? They’re short essays and other missives I wrote ages ago, usually taken from letters to friends and family. I wrote these long before I had a blog and (in the case of this week’s batch) even before I had email. When writing them I tried to be all literary and highbrow, whether or not I had any faith my words would even be read. In that sense these letters were a whole lot like albertnet…

The different volumes of Bits & Bobs are not organized chronologically, thematically, spatially, or in fact at all. You can read these in numerical, alphabetical, sequential, or temporal order, or according to your religious, philosophical, ontological, or spiritual ideals. Are some volumes better than others? I have no idea … I only wrote and compiled them.

Note: albertnet makes no warranty as to the quality, utility, readability, or applicability of these Bits & Bobs. By reading, skimming, scrolling, or gazing upon this post you agree to be bound by the albertnet Privacy Policy, which exists entirely to protect you, but not from every threat. You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the author of this post from any feelings you may have of inadequacy, superiority, awe, or ennui arising from the consumption of this material. If you are a bot, kill yourself immediately. If you plan to read this post aloud, please do so in a firm, authoritative, but friendly voice, and if you sing it, feel free to dance along—but no twerking, for god’s sake.

Today’s Bits & Bobs are in chronological order, and all happen to have been written when I was a Berkeley student.

July 28, 1990

A couple weeks back, a bunch of B—’s Santa Barbara friends came up to visit for the weekend, and we went to this San Francisco bar, the Savoy Tivoli. Everyone was ordering cocktails. I’d never had a cocktail in my life and didn’t even know their names. I felt tongue-tied and almost panicked. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to note what the person before me ordered, and parroted “gin and tonic” as my order. It felt weird to hear this phrase come out of my mouth—like a lie, almost. I mean, I didn’t even know what a gin and tonic was, so to suggest that I actually wanted one was somehow fundamentally untrue. The drink went down easily enough, but I had no idea what it had cost, and you know how broke I always am, so it was the only drink I ordered all evening. (That ended up being a good thing because the entire rest of our party got completely clocked, and it fell to me to be the designated driver.) It was pretty funny: Fat Head started hitting on this girl in our group he didn’t know, somebody’s friend, and he thought her name was Connie but he wasn’t sure, so he was kind of introducing this “H” sound into it, like “CHonnie,” so that if he had the name wrong she’d think he was saying “Honey.” (I wouldn’t have put this together at the time; he explained the strategy the next day.) Well, the girl’s name was actually Alicia and she didn’t buy his BS for a second. So anyhow, B— and I have noted how soft and wormlike guys can tend to get when they’re overly smitten by a girl, and we are perennially on our guard against that. So now when one of us is talking about some fly chick we’re into, we refer to her as “CHonnie,” as a way to downplay our interest, kind of like saying “what’s-her-name.” As a linguistic innovation, it’s right up there with “Hector.”

Speaking of trying to maintain our dignity in the face of beautiful, terrifying girls, B— and I try to balance things out by turning the love interest into a foil for our own joking around. For example, B—’s “friend” M— came to visit, and I knew she wasn’t just a friend, he totally pined for her as he’d described in great detail prior, without even remembering to refer to her as “Chonnie.” Yeah: that smitten. As I was introduced I said, “It’s so nice to meet you M—. Gosh, B— has told me so much about you.” But I made sure to get her name slightly wrong, as a little inside joke to B—. And then when B— left us alone for a few minutes, while he finished styling himself out before they left, I took M— aside and spoke to her in a hushed tone: “Sorry if B— sort of embarrasses you when you go out tonight. I keep promising I’ll take him out clothes shopping so he won’t look like such a dork, but I haven’t gotten around to it. He’s cool though, I mean seriously, except when . . . well, sometimes he acts kind of cheesy. He can’t help it. But you guys will have fun, trust me.” I delighted in wondering how M— would recount this little pre-apology to B— later. Ideally, they’d share a laugh over my “clothes shopping” comment, since B— dresses better than anyone I know, and I shop at Ross Dress for Less. [Note: you can read here how, not long after, B— turned the tables on me. –Ed.]

June 20, 1991

Seems I’m finally getting some acne, after having been mostly spared as a teenager. (Who knows, maybe I’m finally hitting puberty.) But I don’t get a lot of zits all over my face, like a lot of other people. I get one, and only one, except that it only seems like just one, but really it’s like five—four of which are beneath the skin, right underneath the visible one, burrowing deep into my face. Only one makes it to the surface at a time. So it gets good and ripe, whitehead and all, and I go to pop it and the seed comes right out, springing clear of the skin of my face in a valiant attempt to reach the bathroom mirror, sometimes even making a distinct “poip” noise, but to my horror there’s still something there. And that next one lures me into a false sense that it’s ripe, and I invariably try to finish it off, and the whole thing gets red and bloated and really sore. This has happened twice now, once on my forehead where my hair kind of covered it up, and again right near my mouth. I cannot convey to you how pissed off this gets me. Near my mouth, I resisted the impulse to pop the zit, but then when it finally went away, the zit beneath it dropped right down the little pimple-tunnel into exactly the same place as the first. So much self restraint is required here that I’m not sure I can take it. At least it’s not as bad as that forehead one: that one had so much zit-puss behind it I could feel a raised section on my forehead the diameter of a quarter. And you know what the worst of it is? None of my zits has ever been as bad as the ones I see every day, on all kinds of people. On the way to a haircut in the San Francisco Castro district the other day, I was taking Muni, which is this really scummy subway, and I saw this old guy with about seven or eight huge warts on his nose. It was so hideous I could only look for about a second at a time. I got to thinking, what would happen to me if my nose began to grow warts like those? First, this would destroy my social life, as nobody would be willing to subject himself to the heinous sight of me. I would honorably remove myself from people’s sight and become a hermit. I’d only venture out via shitty big-city subways where everybody’s too busy rushing around everywhere to notice me, except for maybe some college kid who thinks he can boost his own self-image (tarnished by a towering whitehead zit, perhaps) by noting the physical deformities of people like me.

September 10, 1991 - Berkeley

I’ve finally mostly got my health back after that heinous, endless strep throat business. There’s just one symptom remaining: I can’t open my jaws more than like a centimeter, because of the residual swelling. So I’m eating a bit slower lately. A friend had me over for lunch at her sorority house and all we had to choose from was roast beef sandwich or salad (which, as you know, is ideal for rabbits and chicks, but not guys like us). So I’m there dipping this roast beef sandwich in the “au jus” and kind of smashing it into my lips and sucking it through the narrow gap between my upper and lower teeth. My parents would be shocked at such table manners. For a moment I worried that the sorority sisters were grossed out, but then quickly grasped that nobody was paying any attention to me. I mean, why would they? I need to get over myself.

I had some totally heinous nightmares when I was sick, dude. The last one I had, maybe a week ago, was that I was with my family at this weird place, sort of a cross between a hotel and a museum, and there was this exhibit on the top floor where you would walk through and see the corpses of all these people who went crazy (some sort of mass hysteria) and killed themselves with scalpels. So I went through and all these people had sliced themselves to ribbons and a few of them weren’t even dead yet. Yow!

Today I was riding my bike through campus (a highly illegal activity, for some reason) when I saw The Most Intensely Beautiful Woman in the World. Have I told you about her? She was in one of my English classes last semester. She makes the second most beautiful girl in the world (her friend, actually, who sat with her) look plain. I’m serious, if you saw her you would instantly reorganize your hierarchy of most attractive females in the world, with her at the top. I’ve never even seen a picture of a model who’s as attractive. At the final exam last semester I arrived a bit early, to make sure I had all the time I needed, and she came and sat right next to me. It was a huge lecture hall, still mostly empty, so there was no need for this; I’m certain she was just messing with me because she’s probably caught me sneaking looks at her. So the lecture hall filled up and then the exam started and for like twenty minutes I couldn’t even think. She’s that fly. I should have waited after the exam and gone up to her and said something really suave like, “Insofar as you totally distracted me just now, and my grade in this class will probably suffer, can you at least tell me your name?” Anyhow, when I saw her again today I almost passed out. I’m lucky I didn’t crash my bike. Damn.

October 1, 1991

Some of my friends are older and have already graduated, and since I’m in my senior year, I’m starting to worry (just a little) about joining the workforce and what that will be like. Here is my composite of what my friends’ stories suggest: the “real job” is distinct from a “summer job” mainly by the level of decorum. Even if you mainly sit in an office talking on the phone all day, you have to wear a necktie. Why the tie? Beats me. Maybe it’s like a collar and leash, to remind you of your submission to your employer. And then you have to drive incredible distances on the highway to get to work, which sucks because of traffic, and then when the traffic finally clears up and you want to make up time so you’re not late to work, you see a highway patrol car and have to slow down again, cussing and moaning about how you’re going to be late now and why doesn’t that cop get the hell out of here and let you be, and then you get to work and whenever the bossman comes around you have to speed up your work, and why doesn’t that jerk get the hell out of here and let you be, and then you drive home and bitch about the traffic, and about the cop, and then you drink a beer and figure out a way to fill in the time before you go to bed, wake up the next morning, and do the whole thing over again. On the weekends, exhausted, you need to get away so you do a trip somewhere, and drive along the freeway and cuss and moan when you see a cop cruiser, and then hang out at a beach and go to a few bars and visit old friends from college and then have to part ways and drive back across the highway and get ready to begin another five-day grind. Man, I can’t wait.

November 5, 1991 - Berkeley

I’m taking this Native American literature course and it’s pretty rad. First we read lots of trickster tales, which bear an interesting resemblance to the African American Brer Rabbit tales. The Native American trickster is usually a rabbit or at least rabbit-ish. The really weird part is how often these stories mention his penis—either its being extraordinarily long, or detachable, or getting badly injured. This is one of the benefits of being an English major: I can regale my roommates with what I’m learning, and they’re actually interested. It doesn’t wash the other way. E— can’t really talk about Political Science because everyone (including he himself) knows that’s pretty boring. M— is getting a PhD in Mechanical Engineering which I suppose I’d find interesting except how could he possibly dumb it down enough for me? The other guy, J—, is majoring in Forestry, and maybe that could be interesting if described by a bright guy, but J— is just a dumbass. When challenged about having the easiest major there is, he replied, “Dude, there’s a lotta trees!” (I didn’t make that up, he really said that.) In contrast, when I recount a tale of the Trickster sending his incredibly long penis across a river to achieve sexual congress with the daughter of another tribe’s chief, I have my roommates’ full attention.

I’m reading this hella dope book called Fools Crow now. I didn’t grasp the point of the title at first because I thought it was “fool’s crow,” like some fool had a pet crow or something, like maybe he’d have been a falconer if he wasn’t such a fool. But it’s actually a verb phrase, “fools Crow,” as in he fooled the Crow tribe. Turns out the Native Americans in the protagonist’s tribe (and probably others) had this convention of giving you a really lame name when you’re young—the protagonist’s was “White Man’s Dog,” i.e., very derogatory—and then if you do something impressive, like using cunning to kill the Crow chief, you get a cool new name honoring your achievement, hence “Fools Crow.” I have been trying to turn this into a new tradition for my roommates and me, giving each other lame names based on our lack of achievement, e.g., Wets the Bed or Chases Bimbos. This didn’t take hold, but then I happened to mention that White Man’s Dog called his wife “nothing-woman.” That immediately stuck, and has become something we invariably call one another (e.g., “Stop leaving your wet towel on the floor, nothing-woman!”) and is also a way to refer to one another’s girlfriends (e.g., “So are we riding this weekend or is your nothing-woman dragging you off somewhere?”).

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Biased Blow-By-Blow - Vuelta a España Stage 9

Introduction

Remember that annoying character, Cousin Oliver, who showed up in a few episodes of “The Brady Bunch?” Well, the Vuelta a España is kind of the Cousin Oliver of the Grand Tours. It’s late in the season, the weather isn’t typically as dramatic as that of the Giro d’Italia, and most of all it simply isn’t the Tour de France. So it gets no respect. But honestly, it’s usually a lot better show than the Tour, especially when a rider whose Tour hopes got scuppered can have one final shot at redeeming his season. I was hoping that’d be the case for Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma - Lease a Bike) this year, after he crashed out of the Tour, but he isn’t here. Instead, Tadej Pogacar decided to show up and make the race boring as fuck. So I almost wasn’t even going to follow this Vuelta. But here I am … can you guess why? Read on!

Vuelta a España Stage 9 – La Vila Joiosa to Alto de Aitana

As I join the action, the riders have 79 kilometers (49 miles) left to race and a breakaway has almost five minutes on the red jersey group. The course profile you see above really threw me because it’s in miles, for crying out loud. Notwithstanding the superiority of the Imperial system of measure, this scale is annoying because looking at the footage, which gives the remaining distance in kilometers, it’s hard to figure out where the riders are. Before my coffee kicked in, and I realized the scale was miles, I was totally confused, to the point of mental collapse, and thought about going back to bed. But of course I didn’t because—and this is the most important thing to know about this year’s Vuelta—Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates XRG) is out of the race.

It’s sad, and strange, but Pogacar, who led the GC battle from day one after winning the very short opening time trial, crashed on a flat, straight road yesterday, apparently after he or someone near him ran over an object in the road. Pogacar went right over the bars and suffered a broken collarbone, a broken vertebra, and a concussion. Of course that is a terrible shame. At the same time, life goes on: insofar as we haven’t resolved to wear black for a year, not go out in public, and not watch any more of the Vuelta, it must be said the race just got way more exciting. Instead of a foregone conclusion, the race is blown wide open.

The riders are crossing the valley floor before starting the third-to-last climb, the Category 2 Puerto de Tudons. Movistar Team leads the peloton, working to bring back this breakaway because their leader, Enric Mas, also leads the Vuelta.

Is Mas Grand Tour winner material? I’m a bit skeptical, as he’s not usually a rider who takes a lot of initiative … he just follows wheels, rides consistently, and hopes for the best. That said, a couple stages ago Pogacar was soloing and Mas actually bridged up to him. It gave Pogacar a bit of a shock, because Mas seemed to come out of nowhere and blew right by him at the very summit of the final climb. Pogi seemed to have forgotten that he doesn’t always get to solo just because he tried. I was reminded of Mike Tyson’s bewildered reaction when Evander Holyfield became the first opponent to actually fight back, instead of immediately folding up. My analogy only goes so far, of course, because Pogacar didn’t bite Mas’s ear, and probably wasn’t even tempted. Pogacar wasn’t overmuch threatened by Mas’s insubordination, as the “attack so they’ll give up” tactic had worked just fine in Stage 4, the first real mountain stage of the race, when the Slovenian soloed from 50 kilometers out and took almost three minutes, easily enough to secure the overall GC barring some catastrophe (which as you now know did happen).

It’s a really big breakaway. Their lead is down to 4:32 … should I give you all the names? What a hassle. I’ll give you a few. We’ve got Gianni Vermeersch (Red Bull - Bora - Hansgrohe), Kevin Vermaerke (UAE Team Emirates XRG), Stefan Kung (Tudor Pro Cycling Team), Alexey Lutsenko (NSN Cycling Team), Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious), and Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates XRG). It’s at least twenty riders total and in the time it took to type that, the lead came down nine seconds. Who knows, maybe a subset of this group will stay away … hopefully not the guys I didn’t name. Anyhow, they’ve got 2.8 kilometers left on this climb.

I took a gamble and slept in a bit late today, figuring that without Pogacar, the race would be slower. This has worked out well … they are way behind schedule to finish at the earliest predicted time.

It’s hotter than balls out there according to Christian Vande Velde, one of the Peacock announcers. Yes, of course I’m paraphrasing. Wouldn’t it be great if these guys talked like that, though? Apparently there was a pretty funny exchange during an early stage, when a freak hailstorm ended the stage and drove all the riders to seek shelter in a roadside hotel. As a friend recounted to me, Bob Roll said something like, “I’m not sure the stage should have ended, I think I’ve raced in worse conditions,” and Vande Velde replied, “You’re an idiot.” Don’t get me wrong, I like Bob okay, but honestly, that rebuke was long overdue.

So how hot is “hotter than balls”? It’s 34 degrees Kelvin. I know that’s not very helpful, especially when it’s obviously not Kelvin, that would be almost 400 below zero. Just making sure you’re awake. It’s 34 Celsius, which is 93 degrees Fahrenheit. Why do all these benighted countries persist with this inferior metric system?

With 1.7 kilometers left in the climb, the gap is down to 4:02. It’s not just Movistar working to close the gap, as several teams now have a good shot at helping their leader win this Vuelta. The favorite now would have to be Primoz Roglic (Red Bull - Bora - Hansgrohe), who has won this race four times, including two years ago. He’s in second overall and trails Mas by just one minute. Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) sits third, a mere 11 seconds behind Roglic, and in fourth is Sepp Kuss (Team Visma - Lease a Bike), 1:04 off the virtual podium and 2:15 behind Mas. Rounding out the top five is the current Best Young Rider of this Vuelta, the one and only Oscar Onley (Netcompany Ineos Cycling Team), a mere second behind Kuss.

Interestingly, with 54 kilometers to go, the gap is increasing again as riders tackle the penultimate descent. It’s back to almost five minutes. But we’re going to see three or four teams shredding the last climb, it’s gonna be awesome. So why does my cat look so bored? She’s barely paying attention!

Who are the other favorites for this Vuelta now? On paper, I’d expect the big battle to come down to Roglic vs. Kuss, since they’ve both proven they can win this. (In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last several years, Kuss has won the Vuelta before, in 2023, despite severe opposition from his own teammates.) Granted, Mas has been second overall three times, but there’s a big difference between first and second. Gall has only managed eighth overall. And neither of them has had to deal with the extreme pressure of seizing and defending a Grand Tour lead.

Alessandro Romele (XDS - Astana) attacks, weirdly enough, and takes the descent solo. I guess if he’s got mad descending skills he might as well; if the break fractures behind him he may have fewer competitors to contend with. Wow, he’s really good and has established a non-trivial 49-second lead. And it’s not like the break isn’t trying … their lead on the peloton has ballooned up to 5:46!

I don’t know how these short climbs get labeled Category 2. It seems like this one only just started and now there’s only 3.7 kilometers left.

Marcel Camprubi (Pinarello - Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team) is chasing down Romele as they approach the summit. He quickly cuts the gap in half. He’s really thrashing the bike but hauling ass, so.

Getting back to the GC favorites, which team is the strongest? Oddly, Visma - Lease a Bike evidently decided that without their usual leader, Vingegaard, they’d just hunt stage wins, which is working out great with their crazy-fast young sprinter, Matthew Brennan, who’s won two stages. Doesn’t bode well for supporting Kuss, though. Movistar was always in this for the GC, bringing two leaders, one of whom, Cian Uijtdebroeks, flamed out in dramatic fashion, dropping out after finishing dead last on Stage 4 due to a hairline fracture on his ankle. Our hearts went out to Uijtdebroeks, as he’d raced the entire stage with this injury, until we found out he incurred it kicking a dog. Then we all despised him, until we learned that the dog was completely racist and deserved to be kicked. Only upon further reflection—can a dog be racist?—did we become truly ambivalent, especially given the karmic notion that that dog’s being kicked was likely something that unfolded through natural moral causation or cosmic law, not entirely due to Uijtdebroeks’s will. We’ve ultimately decided that the case is too murky to justify a strong opinion, and we’ve gone back and deleted all the extreme comments we’d scattered across cycling websites.

Getting back to the team analysis, Decathlon has brought a very strong team here with the specific aim of supporting Gall in the overall. So the team dynamic could blah blah blah I wish something exciting would happen in this stage.

Holy crap, the lead is out to almost six minutes. What are these teams doing? I guess they still have time, with two big climbs to go.

Sivakov has caught Camprubi. They trail Romele by 33 seconds.

In the peloton, both Decathlon and Movistar are now working.

This is interesting. Romele decided his brake lever was dirty and spent so long washing it off, the two chasers all but closed the gap.

I’ll bet their levers are filthy. The question is, will that matter in the finale? We shall see.

It’s another endless commercial break so I’ve bounced over to Claude to see if I can get an answer to a pressing question: how is Kuss’s form right now? Naw, I’m just messing with you … I know the more pressing question is, did Kuss get that tooth fixed? If you’ve been following albertnet you’ll have read about how the American seemed to have Stage 20 in the bag, but then crashed—twice!—on the final descent. He did win the Combativity award, and I was shocked at the state of his teeth as he stood grinning on the podium (a good sport, always!). Kind of hard to look at, honestly. So I really hope he got that fixed now that he’s leading his team in this Vuelta with a serious shot at victory. But Claude can’t turn anything up about the tooth. There’s been no dental report in any cycling journal.

Now, if you’re pedantic enough to care whether Kuss and Roglic are riding well lately, I guess I can speculate. Roglic was hit by a car in training in late July, after which he said it was a struggle even to put on his socks. I’d say he’s riding great, considering. As for Kuss, he raced both the Giro and the Tour so he’s got to be pretty fried. Time, and miles, will tell.

As the riders near the base of the final climb, Decathlon is still up there and Movistar masses for Mas at the front.

More ads, including one for maple-flavored waffles at Chick-Fil-A. I’ll be right back, I have to go throw up.

Okay, I’m back, and the breakaway has reached the final climb. The gap is down to 4:25 on the leading trio, who now have 1:36 on what’s left of the original breakaway. Did I say trio? Looks like Romele detonated at some point and is nowhere to be seen. Oh well ... at least his lever is clean.

As the peloton hits the climb, Decathlon keeps drilling it at the front. How long can they keep this up? It’s a long fricking climb, like 12 miles. My mouth is watering.

The gap is down to 3:48. There’s a chase group of four 1:23 behind the leading duo … or is this really just what’s left of that giant breakaway? Behind them by 11 seconds is Lutsenko. I guess the group did detonate.

Wow, the peloton is depleted too. It’s gotta be fewer than 25 guys and there’s a lot of climbing still to come. The gap has now fallen below three minutes. If a GC favorite launches an attack, that margin could tumble pretty fast. Wait, did I just say “if”? I did. We could see a boring détente here. Mas and Gall just aren’t that attack-y, and Roglic and Kuss (per my earlier analysis) may not feel up to ripping everyone’s legs off, including their own.

For the team supposedly defending their leader’s red jersey, Movistar isn’t doing much now. They haven’t been on the front in at least a dozen miles. In fact, they haven’t even been ahead of Mas. And now one of them blows!

Up ahead, Sivakov attacks and gets a good gap pretty quickly. Camprubi looks to really be suffering, sawing away at his bike, out of the saddle.

Oh yeah, thirty seconds later Camprubi is toast.

Back in the GC group, Mas sits up to fiddle with his water bottle. Look, Mas, no hands!

Mas looks okay but man, his team is getting shelled. Look at this poor bastard being dropped. I wish you could see how bad his form looks, he’s dying.

With five miles to go, the gap is down to 1:45 and Sivakov looks like he’s really hurting.

Ooh, Kuss is dangling just off the back of the GC group.

And now Gall makes his move! Mas seems to handle it pretty easily but the group completely shatters.

Oh man, the gap to the break is plummeting as the grade gets steeper. Sivakov’s shoulders are rocking. It’s only 1:06 now … I can’t see him staying off.

Gall goes again! My god, the effrontery of this man! (You didn’t think I was gonna say gall, did you…?)

Sivakov is practically underwater.

The GC group is down to only Onley, Roglic, Mas, Gall, and Richard Carapaz (EF Education - Easypost). Kuss is way off the back. These guys are passing the remains of the break like in one of those car race video games.

Carapaz attacks! He looks great!

Wow, a big gap yawns way out. Carapaz could well win this stage. And what of his GC hopes? He started today in sixth overall, 2:22 behind Mas. He has to be considered a favorite, especially now. He won the 2019 Giro, you know.

Carapaz overhauls Buitrago.

Wow, Gall has attacked again and suddenly Carapaz and Sivakov are both neutralized!

Gall just keeps drilling it. He’s relentless. Mas just waits, watches, matches, no sense of any initiative but he’s just … competent. For now.

Golly, Gall attacks again, and this time he’s kind of caught Mas napping! Still, it comes right back together. These repeated attacks have got to be costing Gall, though.

Mattias Skelmose had been dangling off the back of this lead group but suddenly catches up and rolls right on by.

And just like that, there’s a huge gap. Skelmose is with Harold Tejada (XDS Astana Team) and one other dude but never mind, I think it’s—whoa, Mas attacks!

Only Onley can respond!

They blow right by Skelmose! He no longer exists!

Wow, Mas looks really strong, he’s just drilling it. And now Onley takes a turn at the front and the group is just scattered. Only Roglic can hang on ... for now.

Behind, Gall has faded and then Roglic. The two drag along for a bit and others catch up. 

Now Roglic has dropped everyone else and has 15 seconds to … no, the screen is wrong. He’s already bridged up!

Mas punches it again and Roglic is dumped instantly. Onley looks good, though.

The peloton has been blown to bits, it’s every man for himself. With 1.2 kilometers to go, it doesn’t look like Roglic can make it back. Cripes, Mas is just drilling it on the front. But Roglic is tenacious, he just keeps clawing away.

They head for the line and Mas leads it out like a boss! He’s crushing it! Onley is clearly in agony!

And Mas has got the win! Brilliant!

Roglic comes in for third and he’s so tired, he can’t even keep his tongue in his mouth.

It seemed like a great move from Carapaz but I reckon he either went too early, or brought the wrong legs today. He comes over in ninth.

So Onley only loses four seconds (due to the time bonus) today, a great ride for him even if Mas was the star of the day. If only Onley can keep this gap down, he might overtake Mas in the GC in the second half of this Vuelta.

Here’s the stage result.

It’s funny: after all the work Gall’s team did to set him up, and all the little mincing attacks he mounted, he ends up losing 18 seconds to Mas, plus another 10 from the time bonus. So he’s not nearly as impressive as his namesake, the tree gall, which is a bizarre phenomenon whereby a gall wasp lays an egg inside the tree’s tissues, and when the larva hatches it releases all these plant hormones and other compounds that cause this kind of weird blister to form on the tree, and this blister becomes like a nursery for the larva which, safely ensconced, feeds on the gall tissue as it grows. Compared to all that, Mas’s futile attacks and fourth place finish don’t seem very impressive. Gall must find Mas’s dominance, and this coverage of it, pretty galling.

And here’s the new GC. Quite a shakeup and Kuss drops to seventh.

They’re interviewing Mas.

INTERVIEWER: [unintelligible]

MAS: You’ve seen the team today, everyone working together so well, thanks very much also to the directors in the car as well.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you winners always do this? During the race you demonstrate individual dominance, crushing out your rivals like a cigarette, and then afterward you get all faux-humble and blather on about your team. It’s totally unconvincing.

MAS: The team was great, everyone was so calm.

INTERVIEWER: Dude. They were off the back. What are you talking about, calm? They were nowhere! When you needed them they straight-up evaporated! They were probably shitting bricks back there, at least they better have been!

MAS: I feel as though going forward I will be very calm, I had great sensations in the legs today.

INTERVIEWER: Is “calm” some kind of code word for “my team sucks and I’m the man!”?

MAS: You do not seem very calm. Do you need a minute to collect yourself?

Note: if you’re new to albertnet, you should know that I don’t speak any Spanish so when I’m translating these interviews, I take inspiration from AI and just blatantly make shit up. Rest assured, though, the fiction above is far closer to the truth than anything Mas actually said. If that makes any sense.

Bob Roll says, “It feels like a thousand light-years since Roglic won a Grand Tour.” This is the second time in this Vuelta he’s mistaken “light-years,” a measure of distance, for a measure of time. Also, a thousand light-years is the very height of exaggeration; that would be 5.879 quadrillion miles, whereas Roglic won the Vuelta as recently as two years ago.

Onley only had a lead of three seconds in the Young Rider classification as recently as Stage 6, but now that’s up to 5:45, a probably insurmountable margin. Am I deliberately contriving sentences to juxtapose “only” with “Onley”? You bet your sweet ass I am. And if only Onley only had a handful of seconds over second as before, the white jersey competition would be a lot more exciting. But let’s not diminish this achievement, as Onley only owns one such distinction so far in this Vuelta.

Christian and Bob are comparing the times of riders on this climb vs. the last time the Vuelta was here. “These riders went four minutes faster, almost five, that’s light-years,” Christian says, and then—as if catching himself—goes on to say, “that’s kilometers ahead.” So he course-corrected with regard to distance vs. time, although a kilometer is only 1.057 × 10⁻¹³ (i.e., 0.0000000000001057) light-years so this is still a gross exaggeration.

Well, nothing interesting is going on with the awards ceremony because there are no podium girls anywhere and no champagne either. It’s the most stripped-down podium presentation I’ve ever seen, they aren’t even giving out merchandise prizes like wheels of cheese, wooden bowls, or salad dressing like in other stage races. I was about ready to wrap this coverage up when I realized I should whet your appetite a bit for the rest of this Vuelta. It’s far from decided, because Roglic trails the GC by only 1:18, with a significant 32-kilometer mostly flat time trial coming in Stage 18. Roglic is a far better time trialist than Mas, Onley, and Gall, and seems to be riding into form in this Vuelta. We can expect a shakeup, and then I’ll be back to report on the queen stage, that being Stage 20, on September 12. BE THERE! (Well, here.)

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.