I hope they don't get any hassle about missing out on 30 minutes' coverage because the women just happened to race too hard for the broadcast plans that were in place! The race appears to be one ITT short of what the men's Vuelta a Burgos was about 10 years ago - 2x punchy finishes, a flatter stage, a short-to-mid ITT and a Lagunas de Neila MTF. If they can add that in it might just be the perfect short stage race (though I'd prefer they use the old version of the Lagunas de Neila MTF if it's going to be the only one - they switched from the gradual-climb-then-descent-then-8km @ 8% version to the old road with 14km @ 5,5% in the men's race because they added the second MTF at Picón Blanco so they needed the second climb to be easier, but in the women's race with only one MTF, the old version would be fine imo, and probably better for the race as it's still long enough to be a real mountain test, more in line with other big climbs the women do, and steeper so it's harder to maintain tempo as that side of Neila is inconsistent too).
Obviously Anna and Annemiek fought out the end and it was essentially one big knock-down drag-out as Anna prevented Annemiek from getting around her, but Demi-goddess for MVP. She was incredible, just rolling through and shelling everybody, including some big name climbers like Longo Borghini and Niewiadoma. Fisher-Black worked really hard but I think this was more about trying to see how far she could go and honouring the leader's jersey than any concerted attempt to win; when she dropped, SD Worx dropped Ash Moolman-Pasio back, their most experienced climber, to babysit her because Vollering really didn't need any help grinding everybody else into powder, and obviously once she let go Niamh fell back pretty hard, dropping around the same time as Cille but finishing 40 seconds behind the crazy banana - still an impressive showing for her, and it's hardly a disgrace to lose a bunch of time to Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig in a final kilometre at 11%, that's kind of Cille's thing.
I'm also going to draw attention to Pauliena Rooijakkers, who is very much a female David Moncoutié. I don't necessarily mean in the whole "If you want me to have some vitamin C, bring me an orange" kind of thing, but I mean what Moncoutié was like as a bike rider in races. She's aggressive in what few true mountain stages there are, she gets better the longer climbs are, and just her demeanour in the bunch; you can always find Pauliena in the péloton - put a camera on the moto at the back of the bunch, she will always be there. She doesn't like pack racing, and consistently loses time in descents, in the rain, and is a nervous and twitchy bike handler, but she's seriously underrated as a climber as a result because she will miss splits and lose time due to being, not inattentive, but not in a position to react to situations developing in the bunch, but her best results are consistently in climbing stages, her only pro win was on Mont Lozère in the Tour de l'Ardêche, and her best stage race results are all in Spain, in the Emakumeen Bira twice, the edition of Valencia which had Xorret del Catí in it, and now here. And speaking of that Xorret del Catí stage, Clara Koppenburg is great when the road is really steep and it is baffling to me that, without any disrespect intended to the team, she wasn't snapped up by a bigger team than Rally - although with her, Sara Poidevin (who is also pretty underrated as a climber) and Kristabel Doebel-Hickok, they are building a pretty nice looking climbing corps.
The top two was pretty self-explanatory, I think we all knew that was likely, but this kind of distance of climbing really tilted things back towards the real specialist climbers like Katrine Aalerud and Rooijakkers, and away from those who excel across the board in the calendar on hilly and mountainous races. Which is more fool me from the prediction game, as I've pointed out several times that 7-8km climbs tend to be around Niewiadoma's threshold and I still picked her.