Jonas Vingegaard takes a big step towards his third grand tour success at the Bola del Mundo
Overall leader team Visma-Lease a bike’s Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard celebrates winning the 20th stage of the Vuelta a Espana 2025, a 156 km race between Robledo de Chavela and Bola del Mundo, near Navacerrada, on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Oscar DEL POZO / AFP) (Photo: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Updated September 14, 2025 02:06AM
Jonas Vingegaard took a huge step towards his first Vuelta a España title by soloing to victory at the Bola del Mundo summit finish north of Madrid. Visma-Lease a Bike’s Danish leader launched his winning attack 1.2km from the finish on the brutally steep concrete road that leads up to a telecoms station perched at 2,251 meters.
Having zipped past Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) coming into a sharp right-hand turn, Vingegaard eased away from the group that also contained his immediate GC rival João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG). The Visma leader crossed the line 11 seconds ahead of his American teammate Sepp Kuss, with Hindley in third, Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) fourth and Almeida fifth.
Vingegaard’s final flourish wrapped up a third stage win of this race and the 10 bonus seconds that went with it pushed his overall advantage out to 1-16 on Almeida, with just one sprint stage remaining Sunday in Madrid. Pidcock, meanwhile, secured his first podium finish at a Grand Tour by fending off Hindley’s final attempt to push him out of third place.
Interviewed soon after his crucial victory the Dane, admitted he’d wanted to take a prestigious stage win having missed out a couple of times earlier in the race. “I wanted to win in Bilbao and I wanted to win on Angliru, but Bola del Mundo is also very special one,” said Vingegaard.
Asked about his stage-winning attack, he explained: “I was feeling – I wouldn’t say comfortable in the pace that João and then Jai were doing – but at least I felt like that I wasn’t on my limit. I felt that I had a good chance of winning the stage. At one point I just decided, ‘Now I’m going to try.’ And then immediately I got a gap. The last few hundred meters were incredibly hard. I almost went into the barrier, a small mistake on my part.”
The Visma leader also confirmed that he’d been struggling with illness in recent days, but felt a change going into today’s stage. “I felt better than the previous mountain top finishes. So I’m super happy with how things went for me today and how the team has done in the last three weeks. The team has been so amazing. I couldn’t have done it without them,” he said.
Almeida, however, admitted that he wasn’t feeling at his best, although that didn’t stop him and his team doing everything they could in attempt to make the stage difficult for Vingegaard. “We had to try, we had nothing to lose,” said the Portuguese. “The idea was to do it as fast as we could, make the stage as hard as we could. Unfortunately, I’ve been sick this week, so the feeling wasn’t the best. But we still tried and I think that’s what matters.
“I’ve got no regrets. We did what we could. Congrats to Jonas. He was super strong, and I think it’s not too bad being behind him.”
While the status quo remained unchanged at the very top of the standings, American rider Matthew Riccitello (Israel-PremierTech) pulled off a huge coup by finishing with the GC favorites and, crucially, well ahead of Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) to take the white jersey of best young rider from the young Italian.
Barring disaster, Vingegaard will be crowned Sunday as the overall winner of the Vuelta for the first time.
UAE and Red Bull did all they could to unsettle Vingegaard and his teammates throughout the stage. After the early break went, these two teams kept it within close range, never letting its advantage extend to much more than 90 seconds. Of the 35 riders who initially went clear, a strong group of five eventually emerged coming off the Navacerrada pass the first time: Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step), Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), Bruno Amirail (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) and Jardi van der Lee (EF Education-EasyPost).
With 19km left, both break and the red jersey group a minute or so behind it had a dodge past pro-Palestinian protesters who suddenly ran onto and blocked the road. Soon after, the break began to split, Ciccone and Landa emerging as the strongest from the quintet going up the Navacerrada for the second time and towards the turn at its crest onto the fearsome 3.2km haul up to Bola del Mundo.
Behind the lead pair, the GC group was also splitting. Fifth-placed Pellizzari was the first major casualty, 7km from home, soon followed by seventh-placed Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale). By the time king of the mountains Jay Vine pulled aside to let his UAE team leader Almeida take up the pace-making, the GC favorites were right on the heels of Landa and Ciccone.
Almeida and Hindley repaid the work done by their teammates throughout the day by giving all they had left. It wasn’t enough, though, to derail Vingegaard, who went on to underline his dominance one final time.