Visma–Lease a Bike is grateful. The team doesn’t have a viable GC contender – though former Vuelta winner Sepp Kuss may have been saving himself for a late-stage win – but they still have Wout van Aert and Matthew Brennan, who are the Lords of the Vuelta Sprint Finishes.
Brennan makes it four
Though Tuesday’s stage 16 had lots of ups and downs, geographically speaking, none of them was worth categorising, so it was always going to end in a bunch sprint, especially with Visma making sure the five-rider breakaway never had much of a lead. The group, which again included the tireless Kevin Vermaerke (UAE Team Emirates–XRG), never had a gap of more than 2:45 and was caught 23.5 kmfrom the finish line.
After that, it was just a matter of 23 km before van Aert surged out of the pack with Brennan on his wheel, dropped him off in front of his sprint rivals and watched his 21-year-old teammate register his fourth stage win in his first Grand Tour. It was also Visma’s sixth stage win of this Vuelta, van Aert having won the other two the previous week. Byran Coquard (Cofidis), who is the winner of the only bunch sprint not won by Brennan, finished second while Vito Braet (Lotto Intermarché) was third. For good measure, van Aert came in sixth.
With next year’s Tour de France opening with three stages in the UK, Brennan is hoping that his success in the Vuelta will convince the team’s staff to let him ride in that race. “A UK start next year – I already said it to the team two years ago when I heard about it – that I’d really like to be there on the start line,”he said after the stage. “And to have guys like Wout and Christophe [Laporte] there also, if we do the same [as we’re doing] here, we can really try to copy what we do and replicate that into a yellow jersey on day one.”
He was rightly proud of his and the team’s performance. “It’s unbelievable. Four victories here; the plan was for one,” he said. “As a team, we’ve won six. I think. I can’t count, we’ve won so many. The stages that we’ve gone for, we’ve really committed to the plan that we had. You’ve seen the boys all day today; they’ve been pushing so much wind, and to finish it off like that, Wout bringing me across the line, basically in a perfect place in such a chaotic final, it was perfect.”
Asked whether van Aert was the best lead-out man in the world, he said, “Yeah, I don’t really think [anyone] can compete. It was a real shame that we lost Christophe, but it’s still unbelievable what we can do when we’re a man down in these type of situations.”
At the post-race press conference, he elaborated on his dreams for next year’s Tour, the first two stages of which seem to be ideal for sprint finishes. “I’ve seen the first and also the second stage, and the third is quite hard, but there are definitely opportunities to do something within my strengths,” he said.
“I would really like to be on the starting line. I also understand that the best squad has to go with the ambitions the team has, but I think that for the moment, with being successful as a team, we can probably use myself in different ways to help Jonas [Vingegaard] bring out his strengths even more and play the cards.”
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And stage 17 makes five
Wednesday’s stage 17 was another very hot day, with a two-rider breakaway that was never going to make it to the finish line without being caught, though its lead stretched to about 5:30. But Enzo Paleni (Groupama–FDJ United) and Sinuhé Fernández (Burgos Burpellet BH) apparently like riding in front, as they’ve been active in other breakaways, and may be looking to catch a big team’s eye.
In any case, same old, same old. Visma and Cofidis mostly drove the peloton’s chase for their respective sprinters, Coquard and Brennan. Eventually, Paleni took off on his own, but when Visma’s Bruno Armirail took the front of the chase, the gap withered away. Eventually Paleni was caught 3 km from the line by a peloton led by five Uno-X riders, including their sprinter, Magnus Cort.
This time van Aert deposited Brennan in third spot, just behind Cort, and the 21-year-old fast man did the rest, winning the sprint by more than a bike length over a late-rushing Jordi Meeus (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe) and Cort. That victory made Brennan the youngest rider ever to win five Grand Tour stages. Visma’s seven stage wins are the most the team has recorded in a Grand Tour, beating the six wins at the 2022 Tour de France and the 2026 Giro d’Italia, and give the team 14 Grand Tour stage wins for the year.
“It is unbelievably special,” Brennan said about the team’s stage-win haul. “We have so many big names that have come through the team and tried to achieve the same thing that we have. We’ve come to this race, and we set out with a plan, and that was to win some stages, but it was never really in anyone’s mind to try and break this record or anything. We sat down yesterday and said, ‘OK, we need to do something here; we need to break this record.’”
Asked about his personal performance, he said, “Maybe in a few weeks on… I will start to look back on it and think, phwoar, that was pretty impressive. I think it’s a really good stepping stone for next year’s ambition and also gives me a lot of confidence to be with all these good guys. It’s an unbelievable situation to be in.”
But to put the performance in perspective, Brennan has benefited from the fact that most of the sport’s top sprinters – such as Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin–Premier Tech), Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) and Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) – didn’t come to the Vuelta. This shouldn’t detract from his achievement, but his real test would come at next year’s Tour de France, if he is chosen to ride in it – which seems likely now.
In an interesting sidelight, Frank Dversnes (Uno-X Mobility) told Eurosport that Visma had informed him that he would not be allowed to join the breakaway and keep Brennan from winning his fifth stage. The reason was his impressive win in a breakaway on stage 15 of the Giro d’Italia, which had been thought to be an ideal bunch sprint finish.
Dvernes said he had been told that by members of the Visma team. “It’s certainly a compliment,” the Dane said. “But it doesn’t make it any more enjoyable for me. That’s cycling and tactics. You simply have to respect it.” Nevertheless, he joined Paleni and Fernández in the break and rode with them for a while, before dropping back and rejoining the peloton.
Küng wins ITT, Mas limits losses
The most interest in Thursday’s stage 18 individual time trial (ITT) was in the head-to-head between race leader Enric Mas (Movistar) and third-place Primož Roglič (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe), who is an excellent time trial rider, which Mas is not. In fact, in the many ITTs the two had raced in together, Mas had never beaten the Slovenian. Mas led Roglič by 2:10 before the start of the stage, too much to make up; but many believed that the Spaniard could lose as much as 1:30, which would make the last three stages of the Vuelta very interesting indeed.
No worries, Spain. Mas rode one of the best time trials of his career, and Roglič didn’t. The four-time Vuelta winner didn’t do badly at all, finishing fourth, 19 seconds behind (Tudor Pro Cycling), the pre-race favourite. But it wasn’t good enough because he only made up 33 seconds on Mas, who placed an excellent 12th.
The gap is now 1:37, which is not impossible to regain on the upcoming two mammoth mountain stages. But Mas has been Roglič’s better in the mountains so far. Still, it wasn’t all bad for the Slovenian because he beat Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) by a wide margin and regained second place in the GC, where he now leads the Austrian by 1:24.
It was an important victory for Küng, who broke his thigh in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on February 28, his sixth day racing for his new team, and was sidelined for more than three months. It was also Tudor’s second-ever Grand Tour stage win, after Marco Brenner’s victory on stage 14. The 23-year-old Scot Callum Thornley led for much of the race, finally finishing second by a mere 2 seconds. João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates–XRG) showed that he is finally regaining his form by finishing third, at 9 seconds.
“In the end, you have to win, it doesn’t matter how big of a margin,” Küng told TNT Sports, referring to the slim margin over Thornley. “I’m super happy to take the win here. I’m alone on the podium today, but it’s a victory to the whole team, thanks to the guys behind me.”
He went on to say that the win was “huge” for his ambitious second-division team. “It was super good to see Marco [Brenner] winning. We’re roommates on this Vuelta, so I think it’s a pretty good outcome for our room. We stand alone on the podium, but there are so many people working hard behind the scenes. I want to thank all of them and all the people that got me back on track after my injury in February.”
Though he lost time to Roglič, Mas looks too strong, and Movistar is riding too intelligently, to be overtaken. It will take a monumental collapse by the Spaniard to give anyone hope of catching him. But, of course, in cycling nothing is written in stone.
Results 2026 Vuelta a España, Stage 18 (ITT): El Puerto de Santa María to Jerez de la Frontera (32.1km)
| Pos. | Rider | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wout van Aert | Visma–Lease a Bike | 2:35:00 |
| 2 | Alessandro Romele | XDS Astana | same time |
| 3 | Thibau Nys | Lidl-Trek | same time |
| 4 | Ramses Debruyne | Alpecin–Premier Tech | +0:02 |
| 5 | Andreas Leknessund | Uno-X Mobility | +0:02 |
| 6 | Alessandro Covi | Jayco AlUla | +0:58 |
| 7 | Bastien Tronchon | Groupama–FDJ United | +0:58 |
| 8 | Henok Mulubrhan | XDS Astana | +0:58 |
| 9 | Stefan Küng | Tudor Pro Cycling | +0:58 |
| 10 | Ivo Oliveira | UAE Team Emirates–XRG | +0:58 |
2026 Vuelta a España, General Classification After Stage 18
| Pos. | Rider | Team | Time / Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Enric Mas | Movistar | 52:05:56 |
| 2 | Felix Gall | Decathlon CMA CGM | +2:06 |
| 3 | Primož Roglič | Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe | +2:10 |
| 4 | Richard Carapaz | EF Education–EasyPost | +4:24 |
| 5 | Oscar Onley | Netcompany INEOS | +5:44 |
| 6 | Jakob Omrzel | Bahrain Victorious | +6:14 |
| 7 | Mattias Skjelmose | Lidl-Trek | +6:49 |
| 8 | Cristián Rodríguez | XDS Astana | +7:01 |
| 9 | Clément Berthet | Groupama–FDJ United | +7:19 |
| 10 | Sepp Kuss | Visma–Lease a Bike | +8:55 |