09/05/26 12:02:00
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09/05 12:00 CDT Mas boosts Spanish Vuelta lead as Roglic falls further behind
Mas boosts Spanish Vuelta lead as Roglic falls further behind
SIERRA DE LA PANDERA, Spain (AP) --- Enric Mas added to his lead of the Spanish
Vuelta on a mountainous 14th stage won by Marco Brenner on Saturday.
Mas tacked some 25 seconds onto his advantage over Primo? Roglic after dropping
the four-time former winner on the final climb and linking up with a
front-runner from his Movistar team.
Flix Gall crossed with Mas and moved into second place ahead of Roglic in the
general classification. Gall is 2 minutes, 6 seconds behind Mas, with Roglic
falling to 2:10 behind the leader.
Brenner won the grueling 151.9-kilometer (94.4-mile) stage in high temperatures
after he bettered his fellow breakaway riders and edged Santiago Buitrago at
the finish. Brenner had time to zip up his Tudor team suit just as he crossed
the line in 4 hours, 15 minutes, 9 seconds. It was the 24-year-old German
rider's first win at a grand tour.
The stage was held in an area just north of Granada that was under a heat
warning with highs forecast for 38 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) in Jaen,
where the day's racing started. Riders tackled a pair of category-two climbs as
they rode through a landscape of sunbaked olive groves before a final ascent to
the category-one Sierra de la Pandera.
Riders were regularly grabbing water bottles from team helpers and promptly
pouring them over their heads or squirting them on teammates.
Mas has led the race since Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar withdrew
following a crash the previous weekend that has ended his season. Now he has
one week of racing left at the Vuelta, where he has finished runner-up on three
occasions, in 2018, 2021 and 2022.
Mas is trying to become the first Spanish rider to win the home race since
Alberto Contador in 2014.
The key to Mas finally coming out on top will likely rest on him having a big
enough lead to withstand Roglic during a time trial on Stage 18.
On Sunday, riders face a 189.7-kilometer route from Palma del Ro to the city
of Crdoba.
This year's Vuelta is based in southern Spain and without any of its classic
mountain finishes in the country's greener north.
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