'It could upend the entire race' – Vuelta a España 2026 stage 20 preview: Will Enric Mas face a last-minute challenge on Sheriff's Hill?

Standing at the summit of the Collado del Alguacil a month before the Vuelta a España reaches it, one thing indicates this is where the last high mountain stage and the 2026 GC battle will end: it is where the tarmac runs out.

There are no buildings in the vicinity, no vehicles, not even any of the telephone masts that usually infest the summits of most Spanish mountains accessible by road. A narrow, winding road somehow managed to claw its way up some unnervingly vertical slopes from the deep, rocky river valley far below, kilometre after kilometre.

But as far as the Vuelta is concerned, just one thing matters: a road race can get here, if no further.

Should you want to head onwards after dragging your way up what is, local cyclists say, one of the most brutally difficult ascents of southern Spain to this incredibly lonely (but beautiful) summit, the road splits into three narrow, unpaved trails that continue across a high, treeless plateau, all under the watchful gaze of the mountains of Sierra Nevada opposite.

You have to know where you're going, though: at the summit one of the two signposts that originally marked the various ways forward lies rusting on the ground, its text all but unreadable, barring the phrases 'Ten en Cuenta' and 'Que Debes Hacer' - 'Keep in mind' and 'What you should do.'

For the 150 or so remaining riders in this year's Vuelta a España, what to do after reaching the last tarmacked metres of the Collado del Alguacil will be pretty clear regardless of the lack of legible instructions: rest, recover and then rest some more.

After all, they'll just have reached the top of the only Hors Catégorie climb of the 2026 Vuelta, and on the same day that the Vuelta's stage 20 also tackles two extraordinarily difficult category 1 ascents: the Alto de El Purche – twice – and the Alto de El Duque.

The city of Granada, lying far below and some 30 kilometres east of the Alguacil, will witness some fierce skirmishes on the laps of a short but steep last city centre ascent on stage 21, and the traditional GC winner's press conference, usually held on the Saturday evening given Sunday is a ceremonial stage, has been put off by the organisers by 24 hours, just in case. But just like the tarmac on the Alguacil road itself, barring major surprise, this is where the 2026 Vuelta GC battle ends.

So what makes the Alto Collado del Alguacil, which translates very roughly as 'Sheriff's Hill,' so demanding – and so critical? Its position in the race, the final climb on the very last day of what has been rated by race director Javier Guillén as the hardest Vuelta of the modern era, is already one major factor.

So too is the fact that it is a completely unprecedented ascent in bike racing; even if many riders have done a recon of it during their training camps in nearby Sierra Nevada, there's no clear reference as to how best to race it.

Lastly, and depending on which weather forecast you read, the intense heat that has battered an increasingly exhausted peloton for much of the final two weeks – and is forecast to hit the mid-30s on Saturday – may or may not be yet another ingredient in the mix on the exposed, stony foothills of Sierra Nevada. But in a sense it doesn't matter.

By this point and on climbs like these, brief micro-fractural moments of weakness can suddenly yawn open into chasms. Or as former riders Luis Maté and Alejandro Valverde both told Cyclingnews, the Collado is an ascent where the race GC can be upended completely.

"If you're winning the Vuelta before this climb, you can lose it," Valverde says, "and if you're losing the Vuelta up to here, you can win it."

This brings us to the climb itself, tackled after that double ascent of El Purche – well-known to Vuelta followers as it's often used as an approach road to Sierra Nevada further up the mountain range – and then the much less familiar Puerto de El Duque.

El Purche is a brute of a climb, with a very steep early series of hairpin bends, and another, much straighter segment at around 18% leading to a dip and vicious upward kick up at the top. El Duque, on the other hand, "is far easier", says Maté, "but it does have a really tough opening section", which also happens to be the same approach road as the start of the Alguacil, before forking right.

"To be honest, the most striking thing about El Duque, more than its toughness, is the scenery," Maté says. "It's much more open terrain than the road that was originally planned to be used, the Alto de Hazallanas, and the views of the mountains all around are spectacular."

For the Vuelta riders, rather than those watching them on TV, after El Duque it's back down the main road to Sierra Nevada – the same segment of super-fast mountain highway where Valverde lost the 2006 Vuelta – and then after a hard double right-hand turn, the Collado del Alguacil.

Longer than expected!

The Vuelta's own route book underestimates the length of the Alguacil by (and this is no exaggeration) just over eight kilometres. Officially it's 8.2km long and with an average gradient of 9.2%. In fact, as soon as the course swings left at a junction in the small valley town of Pinos Genil, 17.1 kilometres from the top of the Collado and with 1,100 vertical metres of climbing left, it's uphill almost all the way. And almost none of it is gentle on the legs, either.

The first part, looping up by a vast reservoir on the right, is on a broad, if curving 'A' road, with gradients averaging roughly 7%, sometimes kicking up to 10% or 11% on the corners. The road surface is good, and when Cyclingnews visited the ascent in early August, there were plenty of roadworks going on to ensure that the rock-strewn slopes on the left-hand side of the valley didn't cause any problems.

But it's certainly hard enough to sap energy and morale even further before the main 'official' ascent itself – and that's even though there's a sudden, quite lengthy drop down to the village of Guejar Sierra right before the real difficulties begin.

Barring a few farmsteads, Guejar Sierra is the last village before three major Sierra Nevada climbs. In a typically Andalucian combination, as you head in, there are plenty of roadside adverts on trees and gates for flamenco shows and (of all things) bonsai plants. Back on the road, as the small knots and lines of bike riders on the A road confirm, Guejar Sierra is also the gateway to a cycling paradise, with multiple tough but quiet mountain routes to choose from.

Head down and to the right in the village, for example, and signposts indicate the road leading to a corkscrew descent and the foot of the much-feared Hazallanas climb – originally on the stage 20 menu of the Vuelta, but cancelled because of landslides. Should you opt to go straight ahead instead, after a couple of kilometres, there's a choice of the ascent to El Duque, or, with a hard left-hand turn onto a track the width of a car, the Alguacil.

Before making that decision, though, you will have had to handle a brutally difficult ascent through the village of around 22%, hauling its way up past houses at a gradient that feels all but vertical. 'Keep going, Champions!' one banner stretched across the road says, 'A Por La Etapa Reina de la Vuelta!' 'Come to Get the Queen Stage of the Vuelta!'

Shortly after a painfully narrow section through the upper part of Guejar Sierra, on a steep left-hand turn the road divides, and this is where the Collado del Alguacil, according to the route book, officially starts. A narrow, dusty lane picking its way past large garden gates and orchards, the road surface on the first part is probably the poorest of the entire climb: twisting, buckled and with lots of patches, it's so narrow anybody puncturing here will have a tough time getting a team car to reach them.

The gradient is not the hardest, but the steadily rising slope of around 9% will definitely be taking a toll as well, and so, too, will the disturbing series of vast, tarmacked rut-like channels or (if you prefer) channel-like ruts – designed to ease the path of floodwater across the road – that make it much more difficult to tackle at speed.

This opening section reaches a definite conclusion (but not after a couple more of these huge ruts) when it reaches a vast boulder on the right-hand side of the road, and the route steepens notably to around a steady 11%. What comes after isn't the Angliru; there aren't any sudden upward kicks of 20 or 25%, but the high, leg-sapping gradients are much steadier than the Angliru too, and as the road begins to snake its way across an upper, exposed landscape, having a teammate here to draft a little could prove invaluable.

That's particularly true given the potential for the wind to shape this part of the course too, particularly as the trees lower down have almost all given way to scrubby bushland and scree slopes by this point, and it's much more exposed.

Interestingly, too, from roughly halfway up the eight kilometre 'official' climb, the road surface is much better than in the valley. Just in the last two weeks, the surface of a segment that was essentially broken-up tarmac has been renewed, making for a much smoother ending than the one riders may have found when doing a recon earlier this year.

The open nature of the climb, too, means that there are ample opportunities for riders to look across the mountainside and see where their rivals are, ahead or behind them.

There are no false flats to recover, though, just a relentless upward grind of around 10% or slightly higher, and the only breaks in the routine of pain that steady demand produces are when the last remaining hairpins in the last couple of kilometres kick up to nearly 16%.

One small zigzag, just before the summit itself, provides a last severely rising pitch, and then it's onto the bare, rugged plateau at the top. This is a very different affair, then, to the Bola del Mundo where Jonas Vingegaard put the Vuelta GC to bed on a series of cement trackways leading to the telephone mast at the top.

But just as Madrid and the final podium was visible in the distance from the top of the Bola del Mundo – albeit beneath a cloud of contamination called la Boina [the bonnet], Granada (with its own major traffic pollution issues) is also just about visible in the distance from the Collado del Alguacil. Just 100 kilometres of racing will be left by that point, too, and the Vuelta's leader will, at long last, know that the red jersey is his for keeps.

Stage details

• Stage 20: La Calahorra - Collado del Alguacil
• Date: September 12, 2026
• Distance: 186.8km
• Elevation gain: 4,849
• Start time: 12:36 CEST
• Finish time: 17:16 CEST

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The final mountain stage of the Vuelta a España, the Queen stage, ends with the maiden ascent of Collado del Aguacil, an 8.3km climb with an average gradient of 9.8%. Stage 20 will test the riders with close to 5,000 metres of elevation gain over 186.8 kilometres.

Heading west toward the Granada mountains from La Calahorra, the route gradually becomes more demanding, with the first climb, Puerto de Los Blancares, coming before the riders reach Granada after 78 kilometres. From there, the challenges intensify with the difficult Alto de El Purche which the riders will tackle twice. The route then heads toward Puerto del Duque, another first-time Vuelta climb, reaching the Sierra Nevada ski station at its summit, 1,670 metres above sea level, with 31 kilometres to go.

After the descent and another passage through the Güejar Sierra area, the riders begin the final HC climb to Collado del Alguacil.

Climbs

• Puerto de Los Blancares (cat. 3, 7.7km at 3.7%), km. 50.7
• Puerto de El Purche (cat. 1, 8,2km at 8.1%), km. 94.3
• Puerto de El Purche (cat. 1, 8,2km at 8.1%), km. 125.5
• Puerto de El Duque (cat. 1, 7.4km at 8.3%), km. 155.4
• Collado del Alguacil (cat. HC, 8.3km at 9.8%), km. 186.8

Sprints

• Güejar Sierra, km. 144

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