Vuelta a España Vuelta 2025, stage 21: Alalpardo - Madrid (108 km)

[Wyndbrook]

Those are very strong words!

Would be good for op to elaborate, I call it unneeded and unwelcome.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Would be good for op to elaborate, I call it unneeded and unwelcome.

While it looks like a rogue's gallery that draws extremely negative implications, if we take the reference to di Luca as meaning the 2009 Giro podium that he later lost, it is on the other hand just a list of recent Grand Tour podiums from wildcard teams (Rujano's are the only results of the four that have stood unchallenged as di Luca's and Cobo's have been annulled by later DQs, Mosquera's were originally removed but have since been reinstated).

At the moment we don't have enough to go on to know if this is going to be an anomaly or not, there's too much that has been unusual about this Vuelta, with three (although stage 21 wouldn't likely have had any impact) stages being stopped, one stage being shortened and a whole host of other stages being Unipuerto which has minimised the impact of his prior inconsistency that has fallen in his favour - the TT being shortened obviously helped but it should definitely be noted in the retelling that stage 11's early neutralisation probably harmed Pidcock as he was on fire that day.

Realistically this could be a breakout to become a genuine threat going forward, but when it's a first breakout and in such anomalous and unusual circumstances around the whole race, it's hard to know if he could be becoming a major all-round threat, or if this is a result which will be viewed in retrospect akin to Peter Velits or Jack Haig's similar results, as total outliers in their careers. We'll only know in a few years' time.

 

[CyclistAbi]

Congratulation to the overall winner Vingegaard, was more of a suck this time still proved that "team and Danish aligned" approach tends to work better in therms of GC racing, compared to the alternatives. Almeida with a great performance and UAE winning half of the stages, still, overall win is the ultimate goal and they failed to secure it this time. Was it only due to Almeida being less capable taking the overall then Vingegaard, or was there more to it. This is something for the team to figure out. Pidcock is the one that suprised me the most, he managed to hang on to the podium and if still riding for Ineos i don't feel that would be the case. Ayuso vindicated and off to new adventures. Protesters in the end with some achievements too.

Overall a good edition.