Onwards and upwards. Enric Mas took another giant step towards winning his first-ever Grand Tour at 31 in the 2026 Vuelta a España as the Movistar racer minimized his losses to Primož Roglič in Thursday's crunch time trial and remains firmly on top of the overall classification.
At the first checkpoint of the 35.2-kilometre time trial across the flatlands of SW Spain, Mas initial time loss of 22 seconds looked significant enough to keep Red Bull's hopes alive that their team leader could open an important gap should the Spaniard begin to weaken significantly in the final two thirds of the pan flat course.
But that didn't happen. Instead, Mas steadied the ship to cede just 36 seconds to Roglič, his main rival for overall victory, by checkpoint 2, and he even regained three in the closing part of the TT on the Slovenian, finally finishing 33 seconds behind at the finish.
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Roglič's result was in no way a bad one, crossing the line in fourth place behind specialist Stefan Küng (Tudor), and comfortably surpassing fellow GC contender Felix Gall (Decathlon CGA CMN) by 1:30 to move back into second overall.
But if the Slovenian's performance was well within expectations, Mas, however, performed far better than could have been anticipated by many - except, it turned out, the man from Mallorca himself.
"We had this [time] in our heads, we were confident that we'd lose less time than what people expected," Mas said. "It's been important. We divided the time trial into three parts, and I think it came off pretty well."
Mas had even felt confident enough to think about slowing down in the final roundabouts, he said, "because the road surface was very shiny and I almost had to ease back a bit."
Whilst he did not answer when asked which previous time trial he thought he had done better, Mas even went so far as to say that he thought this was not the best TT of his life. It may, however, be one of the most definitive, given he now has an excellent chance of claiming his first-ever Vuelta a España victory.
"I've had better ones than this, but I have to be happy, no way am I unhappy with this," Mas explained. "We have to feel confident about what we can do."
"It would be nice to win another stage, but the objective from here on is clear and simple, and we have to go for it."
Asked if he had changed his time trialling strategy in the last few months, Mas said he had had a different preparation, "and it's going the right way." Nor had he felt particularly tense beforehand, "only during all the questions about the time trial we had to face in the team."
With an advantage of 1:37 for the remainder of the race, and having already shown his superiority in the mountains, the situation following the stage, which hypothetically was where Mas would be at his weakest, could hardly be bettered.
"That can be a lot of time or not very much. We just have to keep going, and up to now, looking at what we've done, I feel very, very good. I'm happy and keen to take on these last two days in the mountains."
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