Onley admits sprint mistake after narrowly missing Vuelta stage win

The Briton was the only rider able to follow when Mas made his decisive acceleration with 1.8 kilometres remaining on the final climb. The pair stayed together into the final kilometre, before Mas opened his sprint around 200 metres from the line and held off Onley to take victory on his first day in the red jersey.

Onley had been warned over the radio about the final corners and the short run to the finish, but felt afterwards that he could have reacted sooner.

“I heard on the radio that there were a couple of corners with maybe 150 metres or something to go,” Onley told Eurosport. “Looking back, I should have gone a bit earlier.”

With both riders already deep into the red after almost 5,000 metres of climbing, Onley felt the nature of the finish gave a significant advantage to whoever committed first.

“I think when it’s a sprint like that, on fatigue, basically whoever opens it kind of stays away,” he explained.

Still, there were no complaints about the result. Mas had done much of the work once the pair went clear and Onley acknowledged that the Spaniard had earned the win.

“Chapeau to him. I think he was obviously stronger. He was pulling also in the last couple of kilometres and I just had to sit on the wheel. Of course I would have liked to have won, but I think the stronger man won.”

The battle for the stage came at the end of a tactical final ascent in which the leading general classification riders repeatedly traded attacks.

Decathlon CMA CGM had helped set the pace earlier on the Alto de Aitana, but their support around Felix Gall disappeared sooner than Onley had expected. By the time the favourites reached the steeper section of the climb, the leading contenders were largely isolated.

“I think it was a bit different to the other days because Decathlon maybe burned through their guys a bit quicker than they would have liked, or than I was expecting,” Onley said.

“When we turned right onto the harder part of the climb, we were all isolated by then. There were a lot of attacks, but then we were all kind of looking at each other.”

Onley himself attacked with a little over five kilometres remaining, prompting an immediate response from Mas. Gall and Richard Carapaz also tried to break the group apart before Mas eventually made the move that mattered.

For Onley, the repeated changes in pace arguably played into his hands.

“A final like that, it’s kind of hard to create bigger time gaps because it’s a lot of stop and start,” he said. “That also kind of suited me, I think. It worked in my favour.”

His performance was also another indication that the illness which hampered him earlier in the race is now behind him.

Onley revealed after the Andorra stage that he had suffered a difficult night with stomach problems. Although he was able to continue racing, he said the effects lingered for longer than he initially expected.

“Today was probably the first day I felt back to normal,” he said. “Yesterday as well, but today I think was really the first day.”

Back to full strength, Onley was able to match the Vuelta leader on one of the hardest climbing days of the race.

By finishing alongside Mas, Onley also made ground on the riders directly ahead of him in the general classification. He gained ten seconds on Roglič and 31 on Gall, cutting his deficit to the Austrian to 41 seconds. Onley remains fourth overall at 2:20 from Mas, with Roglič second at 1:18 and Gall third at 1:39.

The result leaves Onley within striking distance of the podium as the Vuelta resumes after Monday’s rest day.