'Today was the last chance': Landa redeems 'worst season' with Vuelta queen stage triumph

Mikel Landa won stage 20 of the Vuelta a España on the Collado del Alguacil, attacking twice on the final climb to drop Tobias Halland Johannessen and Ramses Debruyne and ride the last seven kilometres alone.

Johannessen finished 47 seconds down, with Debruyne at 1:27. The climb measured 8.4 kilometres at 9.8 percent, with sections reaching 22 per cent low down and 16 percent near the summit.

"I feel very happy. It's something I've been looking for a long time and finally I win again," Landa said. "Really emotional. It's been a really hard season, a really hard Vuelta for me, and today was the last chance," the Basque native told Eurosport.

It is the 17th win of his career, his first since the 2021 Vuelta a Burgos, his first at WorldTour level in eight years, and his first Grand Tour stage since the 2017 Giro d'Italia.

Landa fractured his pelvis at the Itzulia Basque Country in April, an injury initially missed on scans that ruled him out of the Giro. He arrived in Monaco with no expectations at all.

"This is the most uncertain Vuelta of my career. I've had a bad year, I'm on the bounceback from a very difficult injury and I'm certainly not at 100 per cent," he said before the start, adding that he had not enjoyed any training all season.

The bone took most of the year to heal properly. Speaking last week, he said the problem had finally resolved.

"At first, the bones wouldn't properly knit together, but now I no longer have any issues from it."

He finished outside the top 50 on every stage of this Vuelta bar one and told AS this week that he had thought about abandoning, naming Friday's stage to Peñas Blancas as the reason he stayed. That did not come, leaving the queen stage as the last opportunity.

"It has not been just this Vuelta, it has been the whole year. I had a lot of doubts, a lot of pain," he said. "The level is still there. If I am well, I am there. That gives me confidence."

Saturday's win took some getting to. Landa missed the initial 14-man move, which contained six Uno-X Mobility riders, and had to work across from a chase group of around 50 riders, making the junction just outside 50 kilometres from the line. He went clear with Johannessen and Debruyne with 38 kilometres left.

His previous Vuelta stage win came in Andorra in 2015, when he conquered a brutal six climb stage with more than 5,000 metres of elevation gain that had been billed as the hardest in the race’s history.

Landa leaves Soudal Quick-Step after three seasons and returns to Euskaltel-Euskadi in 2027 on a two-year deal. He turned professional with Orbea in 2010 and rode for Euskaltel from 2011 until the team folded at the end of 2013, before spells at Astana, Sky, Movistar and Bahrain. He described the move as now or never and has said it is not a farewell tour.

"It's a two-year deal, and I don't want to go there just for a stroll, not at all. I wanted to go to a team where I could contribute on a sporting level," he told AS.