Jonas Vingegaard takes Stage 20 to seal red jersey at 2025 La Vuelta as Tom Pidcock cements podium place

Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) effectively sealed victory in the 2025 La Vuelta when resisting everything Joao Almeida threw at him on Stage 20 before storming to victory.

Almeida’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG set a hard pace from the off and carried that into the final climb of the Bola del Mundo in a bid to find weakness in Vingegaard.

Hard though he tried, Almeida could not crack the race leader, and it was the Portuguese who weakened in the final couple of kilometres.

Vingegaard broke out for victory just outside the final kilometre and powered away to cement his position at the head of the race with one stage remaining.

Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) fought hard to cement his grip on a podium spot in third, while Matthew Riccitello (Israel-Premier Tech) displaced Giulio Pelizzarri (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) as the best young rider.

The Vuelta’s final stage before Madrid offered the last chance for meaningful movement in the general classification. The question at the start of day was: With almost three weeks of brutally hard riding in their legs, would any rider have the strength to make that change? Another 4000m of climbing would reveal the answer.

Almeida’s UAE certainly set out with every intent to help their leader take a second stage win and, perhaps, close the 44-second gap to Vingegaard. 

Such a small time difference meant there was never much chance of a breakaway going the distance. Even one 37 riders strong containing such luminaries as Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), Bruno Armirail (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step) and Eddie Dunbar (Jayco AlUla).

The large group that made it clear by the summit of the second climb of the day had to fight for every second of what was never, in the end, more than a limited lead. UAE pair Mikkel Bjerg and Ivo Oliveira were tasked with keeping the gap to around two minutes. Red Bull provided some relief, a sign that fourth place Jai Hindley was another man with a plan.

The day’s climbing tests were to take the form of a double ascent of the Puerto de Navercerrada, a climb familiar to the Vuelta, tackled via two different routes. The second was set to go beyond the regular road summit to the seldom tackled, fearsome Bola del Mundo finish, last used in the race in 2012.

On the approach to the first, the gap was down to 90 seconds. Less than a kilometre in the breakaway was seeing riders shelled like peas. Lidl-Trek had Julien Bernard and local boy Carlos Verona doing all they could to give Ciccone every chance, but the peloton had decided it would not be their day. Just as the breakaway was crumbling, so the bunch was becoming a shadow of its former self.

Having distanced the rest, Ciccone, Landa, Bernal, Armirail and Jardi Van der Lee (EF Education EasyPost) went clear over the top, one minute ahead of the peloton. The long smooth descent allowed them to hang onto all of it, even gaining a few seconds more, but the numbers game was not in their favour. Almeida still had his top climbing helpers, Marc Soler and Juan Ayuso swapping turns on the front, with Felix Grosschartner and the race’s King of the Mountains, Jay Vine, waiting in the wings.

As the road began to rise again Landa, showing himself to be in the best form in a year, looked to ride at a strong pace all his own. He bid farewell to his erstwhile allies, before Ciccone caught and passed him again, the two eventually settling to ride as a cooperative for the first nine kilometres of the official final climb of La Vuelta. In the bunch, at seven kilometres from the finish, Grosschartner handed the reins to Vine. The Australian added sufficient impetus to bring the gap down to 30 seconds and cause the white jersey of Pelizzarri to lose contact with the favourites. 

Landa and Ciccone held on longer than expected, but never long enough that they looked a threat to the stage. They made it just about as far as the turning off the main road, where the surface turned from tarmac to concrete, but as the gradient reared up it was all over for them both.

It was down to Almeida to do what he could. He led four survivors, Vingegaard, Hindley, Pidcock and Sepp Kuss (Visma), with the slight figure of Riccitello just behind. Hindley, desperate to do something, overtook him with 2.2km to go and while he was able to put Pidcock in some difficulty, it was never quite enough to truly distance the British rider.

Likewise, Almeida did not have what it took to definitively attack Vingegaard, and it proved to be the red jersey who issued the final fatal blow of the race. Metres before the flamme rouge, he surged up the steep inside of a hairpin, opening up initially a small gap to the rest before turning it into a measurable one as the terrain eased. That was all he needed to ride clear and be sure not just of another stage victory but his first overall title.

Kuss made it a Visma 1-2 on the stage while Hindley, although he was able to claim the remaining bonus seconds as well as take a few seconds on Pidcock, could not do enough to displace him from the podium. Almeida finished fifth on the day, satisfied with both performance and outcome.

"The idea was to do the stage as fast and hard as we could," he said afterwards. "We did what we could and have no regrets. Congrats to Jonas, he was super strong. It’s not too bad being behind him."

A visibly exhausted Pidcock expressed his pride at having reached a new milestone, which he considered "the biggest performance of my career", while being relieved that the three-week challenge was all but complete.

"Every day you're so focused, making sure you're switched on for everything and now I can just sit here and relax," he said.

For his part Vingegaard, La Rojo, looked in better shape than he had for much of the week.

"Today I felt better than the previous mountaintop finishes," he said.

Explaining his decisive final attack he said he "felt like I was not on my limit yet, so I felt I had a good chance of winning the stage. At one point I decided ‘now I’m going to try’ and immediately I got a gap."

A gap that, barring disaster, will be sufficient to seal an historic first Vuelta title.
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