MOUNTAIN BIKE Gearing Used on Insane Goat Track | Vuelta España Femenina 2026 Stage 6

This isn't the Angliru, this is Les Preres, a certified goat track in the northwest of Spain. Yesterday's stage, Anna van der Breggen crashed. This is her crashing in the run into the sprint finish. Her teammates were in front leading out, well we thought leading out Loretta Capecchi. So van der Breggen, we had no idea what shape she'd be in today after that crash at high speed. In the sprint yesterday, Bredevold was leading out Capecchi. Para Nostra on the wheel of Capecchi and Capecchi let Bredevold win. Thankfully today we had a different stage. This was the fifth sprint in a row. You can see Capecchi, yeah, putting on the brakes when she's sure that Bredevold can win the stage. Today's stage, finally we have some climbing from Guijon to Les Preres, Nava. It is a 20 minute 4k, 13% absolute wall and it's tricky. The run into this had an important crash, I think for maybe Sivakov in the 2022 Vuelta when Remco destroyed everybody on this. Luis Menchiz won from the breakaway and yeah, it's so steep and it's going to start a crash later. I think from Paula Blasi, she has a mechanical, she comes back, the roads are drying and then it's going to rain again later. So the Vuelta here, making this final climb without losing time is tricky. We saw a move from Koch though, she was trying to take some points for the points jersey. Bredevold took away the points from her, which means Capecchi I think mathematically seals it. The second important crash was Sarah Van Dam from Visma Lisa Bike. You see she was moving up the inside and her front wheel, I think this like, the curb starts, the footpath to nowhere and she's in the gutter and then her front wheel I think hits that curb head-on and her front tyre just explodes. So crashes before, she thankfully got up and finished the stage. Looked like it could have been worse with that guardrail there and then Falkner's positioning Kerbol. I always find it like counterintuitive that we have a 20-minute wall coming up where drafting doesn't matter, pacing doesn't matter, your first, your entry position really like doesn't matter and we see like Kerbol and others just going full, full in the descent and sprinting and then you get there, it's like okay, well it's a 20-minute, well a kilo threshold test where you don't want to start that with a one minute or two minutes of spikes and surges and the woman who was not surging, who was doing one tempo like she did on the Murdaoui for a decade, Anna van der Breggen just brings Kerbol back, goes straight to the front and she starts to absolutely drill it. Pauline Ferrand-Prevot dropped, Bounel coming back, N'Viadoma who was the race favorite on her wheel looking okay, Paula Blassie in third position but with 2.9 k's to go you see N'Viadoma pulls out of the line. I think this was quite impactful actually, every little counts, every surge you do above threshold when you're already at the absolute limit hurts and Blassie just gets taken off the wheel a little bit there when van der Breggen starts to surge and when you see how close it was to come back to the wheel for the next 12 minutes, yeah does that make the difference? Probably not. Bounel's coming back then van der Breggen kicks a second time it looks like Muzic or Bertet was coming over so pacing very very important on this climb and van der Breggen was doing her own thing and we got locked into a huge battle here where van der Breggen, if you look at her gearing, so her and Bounel are on SRAM and van der Breggen's definitely got some sort of special mountain bike Frankenstein gearing set up that the sort of thing I like to do with my bike when I was at university and she knows you got to spin to win, spin to win on the steep gradients and I think more than Cassia pulling out of the line I think the gearing made a huge difference today and van der Breggen being able to spin and I'll show you Blassie later on the climb she's just like doing strengthies she's doing Mt Coot-tha backside strengthies on a Tuesday morning before working but instead of it being you and me but before work she's doing this on the highest level and Paula Blassie I mean she is performing so well this season she's not even that small like a climber she's a power climber in the Ardennes she's not like Bounel who's really really small who's built for these goat tracks and she was having to grind and when it was flatter when she could do a better cadence that she was happier with she seemed to be coming back to van der Breggen we had this short descent section then it kicks up in the steepest section it looks like is at the end here van der Breggen had like a mountain bike cassette on I think she definitely had a tiny front chain ring and here on the 20% gradients this is I think where it made the difference where van der Breggen was able to spin something tolerable and here Blassie is just grinding like 50 rpm so Blassie incredibly strong she's going to podium this Vuelta most likely which no one could have predicted at the start of the year she's the breakout star of this year but under van der Breggen with the experience with the climbing pedigree she wins the stage puts one hand on the trophy Blassie only seven seconds behind huge performance from her Bounel on 28 seconds but not far behind her so it is still all the playful on Angliru tomorrow it's going to be very exciting there we can have 60 minutes of this sort of grinding up a steep climb here's what the dutch star had to say after the stage well it was a really hard day whole day was fighting and climb like this I think I never saw before so it was it was a hard climb but also uh yeah nice I mean the girls uh take care of me all day and then uh yeah I mean I I actually uh wasn't feeling so good in the beginning of the race because I still could feel the crash from yesterday and had the muscle which was really painful but it was getting better and better so in the end I had the confidence like uh yeah I should be able to ride normal and then uh I mean finishing like this uh yeah I'm incredible happy how was that climb yeah uh yeah it was special I mean it started steep and it finished steep and it's just uh I tried to get a good pace but yeah I mean at one point uh it's just it's hard and then uh yeah I mean you need to pace it well you know it's not that long today tomorrow is way longer so uh try to do well and luckily in the end it was enough but as I said in GC it's 18 seconds but you can lose 14 13 15 seconds with the bonies on Angliru it's gonna take it's gonna be 60 minutes when you include the warm-up climb at the start 60 minutes plus I mean you can lose that 18 seconds in the last 500 meters no problemo so van der Breggen in a great position looked the best today but I'm hoping Blasi can push it tomorrow