Spaniard Pablo Castrillo claimed his second stage victory in the Vuelta by winning at the top of the grueling Cuitu Negru on Sunday during the 15th stage of the Vuelta a España, with Ben O’Connor still leading ahead of Primoz Roglic.
Already the winner on Thursday during the 12th stage, Castrillo, 23, signed the most beautiful victory of his young career by leaving 3km from the finish, dropping his breakaway companions, the Russian Aleksandr Vlasov and the Frenchman Pavel Sivakov.
On the toughest slopes of the Cuitu Negru, with gradients of over 20%, the rider from the Spanish team Ken Pharma was able to resist Vlasov’s comeback to cross the finish line in the fog with a 12-second lead over the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider, and 31 seconds over Sivakov.
“It’s something I couldn’t even dream of,” Castrillo reacted after the race, still stunned by this victory. “I didn’t think it was possible to achieve this (two victories, editor’s note) in this Vuelta.”
In this same dreaded final climb, the main attraction of a stage that otherwise went off without a hitch for the favourites, the Slovenian Primoz Roglic, who is aiming for a fourth Vuelta crown (after 2019, 2020 and 2021), also tried his luck, after an unsuccessful first banderilla from the Spaniard Mikel Landa.
Following a lot of work from his teammate Florian Lipowitz, Roglic, second overall, launched his attack 2km from the finish, dropping the Australian and leader O’Connor.
But the Slovenian himself was surprised by the Spaniard Enric Mas, who not only caught up with him, but also overtook him at the finish.
Unable to keep up with the pace of his two pursuers in the general classification, O’Connor finally limited the damage, and kept his red jersey, even if his lead is disappearing. He now has only 1:03 seconds ahead of Roglic, who was given a 20-second penalty at the finish for taking shelter for a long time behind his sports director’s car after changing his bike, and 2:23 ahead of Mas.
After a rest day on Monday, the riders will start the final week of the Vuelta on Tuesday with a new mountain stage. From Luanco, they will cover 181.5 km to reach the Covadonga lakes, in the Picos de Europa, where Roglic had already won in 2021, the date of his last victory in the Tour of Spain.
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