Ninth overall, and then a few kilometres of stage 13
Two weeks of work went down on Andalusian asphalt on Friday morning. Gregor Muhlberger crashed in the opening kilometres of stage 13 of the Vuelta and could not get back on the bike. The Austrian was ninth on general classification when he hit the ground.
Decathlon CMA CGM lose more than a top-10 placing. Muhlberger was the rider Felix Gall leaned on when the road tilted up, and the team has no obvious like-for-like replacement in the mountains.
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Gall is on his own up the climbs now
Friday’s route ran 193.2 km from Almunecar to Loja with 3,400 metres of climbing stacked into it. Exactly the profile where a rider of Muhlberger’s quality changes the shape of a race.
The team is not empty-handed. Leo Bisiaux, 21, has been in the move almost every day since the second week began. On Thursday, on the road from Vera to Calar Alto, the Auvergne rider had a stage win in his hands until Slovenia’s Jakob Omrzel came past him. None of that alters the plan the team arrived with: win this Vuelta with Gall.
Enric Mas still has the red jersey, and he added to his cushion on Thursday.
The favourites keep disappearing
This race has been shedding its biggest names since the second week. Tadej Pogacar went first, crashing on stage eight, breaking a collarbone and needing surgery. He left a Barcelona hospital on Thursday. Madrid is off the table for him.
His absence cracked the race open. Muhlberger’s crash cracks it open a little further. Six days of racing left for whoever is still standing.
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