Tadej Poga\u010dar won his third stage of the\u00a0Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a on stage 6 on Thursday, but he didn\u2019t have it all his own way for once.<\/p>\n
Enric Mas (Movistar) reeled in Poga\u010dar after the Slovenian had made what looked to be his decisive attack and took Thursday\u2019s stage to a two-up sprint.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar easily outkicked the Spaniard in the finale, but this was a rare fault from the GOAT.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d taken a significant gap over Mas before the Spaniard rallied and caught him back at the summit of the final climb of the day.<\/p>\n
And that wasn\u2019t all \u2014 Poga\u010dar only narrowly avoided disaster when he veered off the road on the steep downhill that followed and had to push his bike across the grass to remount the tarmac.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar suggested in the winner\u2019s interview he was caught out by a communication kerfuffle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really surprised on the top, Mas flew by me like a rocket,\u201d Poga\u010dar said at the finish. \u201cI was not expecting it \u2014 I heard in the radio I was leading by 40 seconds over the chasers and there was no mention of Enric. So I was shocked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar did, however, praise Mas.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old Movistar leader dug deep in the finale as he and Poga\u010dar pushed hard to prevent being caught by the chase group.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just happy to have him in the final 10km into the headwind \u2014 I had no water,\u201d Poga\u010dar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end I knew I could beat him in the sprint, but I appreciate that he committed all the way to the finish line.\u201d<\/p>\n
GC reshuffles in explosive final<\/h2>\n
Rising Belgian star Ramses Debruyne (Alpecin Premier Tech) won a sprint of the pursuing GC riders to finish third and vault from 12th to 8th overall.<\/p>\n
Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike), Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), and Oscar Onley (Netcompany Ineos) didn\u2019t make the chasing group in the explosive finale of the stage and lost 1:38 in what was a major dent to their podium ambitions.<\/p>\n
#GCKuss may be in trouble.<\/p>\n
Kuss, Skjelmose, and Onley are now more than 5 minutes back on Poga\u010dar and two minutes back on Mas. The Movistar climber moved up to second place overall courtesy of his courageous resistance Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar\u2019s third win of La Vuelta<\/em> leaves him 3:34 ahead of Mas in GC.<\/p>\n Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) drops a spot to third overall at 4:21.<\/p>\n Stage 6 into Castello was a rude wake-up call after a more sedate stage on Wednesday.<\/p>\n This 178km day in the medium mountains amassed more than 3,000m of climbing across four categorized ascents.<\/p>\n The final climb to Puerto El Bartolo was the hardest of the four and peaked out just 20km from the line. The 9.4km Cat.1 averaged 7 percent grade but included close to 2km of unpaved roads averaging 11 percent. Several ramps kicked up to beyond 20 percent through the top half of the mixed-surface climb.<\/p>\n The race blew open when a 16-rider break formed after around 70km of racing.<\/p>\n Wout van Aert and Bahrain Victorious leaders Pello Bilbao and Santiago Buitrago made the move, meaning this was no soft TV attack.<\/p>\n Rising star Debruyne was also there. After starting the day 12th at 4:44 back, the Belgian stood to make a massive move up the general classification.<\/p>\n But Poga\u010dar is Poga\u010dar and UAE Emirates-XRG is UAE Emirates-XRG. They wanted the win for themselves.<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar\u2019s stormtroopers turned on the turbos in the final 30km and trimmed the gap before Poga\u010dar forced the selection 4km from the summit of the steep final climb.<\/p>\n Onley was most tenacious of the small group who clung to Poga\u010dar\u2019s seated acceleration, but there was no hanging with Pog. Not intially, at least.<\/p>\n Mas chased solo to bridge a sizable gap, just ahead of the summit.<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar pushed the limits in the narrow descent that followed.<\/p>\n Perhaps he was flustered, perhaps he was bonked, or perhaps he was greedy. Whatever the cause, he overcooked a shallow right hander, veered into the grass, and only narrowly kept it upright.<\/p>\n Kuss\u2019 GC bid might have been crushed Thursday when Poga\u010dar made his stage-winning acceleration.<\/p>\n The Eagle of Durango was nowhere to be seen while his rivals Onley, Mas, Rogli\u010d, Richard Carapaz, Felix Gall, and early attacker Debruyne led the chase.<\/p>\n #GCKuss may revert to #StageHunterKuss for the remainder of the race.<\/p>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/vuelta-a-espana\/vuelta-a-espana-stage-6-report-results\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2291721195-scaled.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated August 27, 2026 10:38AM Tadej Poga\u010dar won his third stage of the\u00a0Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a on stage 6 on Thursday, but he didn\u2019t have it all his own way for once. Enric Mas (Movistar) reeled in Poga\u010dar after the Slovenian had made what looked to be his decisive attack and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2116469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2116469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2116469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2116469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2116469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a goes off-road<\/h2>\n
Mas resists King Pog \u2013 who also goes off-road<\/h2>\n
![](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2292317036.jpg?width=2048&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
Kuss\u2019 GC quest takes a hit<\/h2>\n
Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a stage 6 results<\/h2>\n\n<\/div>\n