His voice may have been muffled by his face mask, but Enric Mas' words in the media scrum atop Cuitu Negru still had the sound of a rallying cry. "Tenemos mucha Vuelta," he said – we've got a lot of Vuelta a España left.
Atop the Puerto de Ancares on Friday evening, one wondered if Mas was slowly putting aside thoughts of winning this Vuelta. The Spaniard had impressed across the opening half of the race, always present and correct whenever Primoz Roglič accelerated, but he suffered the indignity of being burnt off the Slovenian's wheel in the finale of stage 13, losing a minute in the process.
The complexion of Mas' Vuelta looks rather different after a spirited display at the mist-shrouded peak of Cuitu Negru on stage 15, where he caught and then briefly distanced Roglič on the dizzying slopes in the final mile or so of racing.
Roglič clawed his way back up to Mas' rear wheel before the finish line reared into view amid the gloom, but the Spaniard could at least claim something of a psychological victory. He would also receive a tangible, if unexpected reward, at day's end, when the race jury docked Roglič 20 seconds for drafting behind his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team car after switching bikes ahead of the final climb.
As the Vuelta reaches its second and final rest day in Asturias, Mas is thus third overall, now 2:23 behind red jersey Ben O'Connor (Decathlon AG2R) and just 1:20 behind the favourite Roglič. Even before learning of that additional gain on Roglič, Mas had declared himself satisfied with his afternoon's work.
"My confidence has always been 100%," Mas said. "The other day [on Puerto de Ancares] I believed it was just going to prove to be a bad moment, and today it looks like that was the case."
Mikel Landa had ignited the attacking in the red jersey group after his Soudal-QuickStep squad had set the pace for much of the afternoon, but the Basque failed to discommode any of the podium contenders.
The lie of the land among the favourites changed with the topography. The gradient ratcheted inexorably upwards on the 3km stretch that brought the race from the familiar climb of the Pajares to the summit of Cuitu Negru, which featured just once before, back in 2012.
As anticipated, Roglič seized the initiative here, accelerating after his teammate Florian Lipowitz had upped the ante, but the Slovenian couldn't reprise his Ancares exhibition, and Mas battled his way back up to his wheel before briefly dropping him.
Mas would finish fourth on the stage, 1:04 down on the winner and earlier escapee Pablo Castrillo (Kern Pharma), but ahead of all of his GC rivals. He picked up 9 seconds on Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), 23 on Landa and, crucially, 38 on the red jersey O'Connor in the Vuelta a España GC standings.
"O'Connor has done a very good stage, but I'm getting there, little by little," Mas said. "I don't know how much I've put into the others. But little by little, I'll keep on making up time."
Mas had never raced up Cuitu Negru, but he had pored over the footage of the Vuelta's 2012 visit as though it were the Zapruder film. "It was really hard. I've seen the video of Purito, Valverde and Contador more than 40 times," he said. "And at some point, I thought I wouldn't make it to the finish."
Mas arrived at this Vuelta on the back of a lacklustre Tour de France, but he has a habit of pulling out big performances at this race, placing second overall in 2018, 2021 and 2022. It remains to be seen if he can bridge the ten-year gap and become Spain's first Vuelta winner since Alberto Contador in 2014, but he was bullish about the idea on Sunday evening.
"We've got a lot of Vuelta left," Mas said. "There's a lot left and we'll have to enjoy it."
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