The final stage of Vuelta a Burgos was extremely similar to the third Picon Blanco stage, with UAE-Emirates star climber Adam Yates aggressive but failing to break Primož Roglič. The Slovenian is clearly in good shape before his fifth consecutive Vuelta a Espana.
The steep gradients on Lagunas de Neila offered a good chance for Adam Yates to try to drop Primož Roglič, as the last 4 kilometres of the climb averaged 11% gradient. The stage before the climb was not particularly hard. Euskaltel-Euskadi climber Joan Bou spent 2,687 kilojoules for 3:53 hours before the steep part of the climb. That is only 11.33 kj/kg/h, a fairly low intensity, but the whole stage was at around 1000 metres above sea level on the Burgos plateau and it was a very hot day as always the case in August in Spain.
Jumbo-Visma could rest their mountain guys as the pressure was on UAE-Emirates to drop Roglič to gain time or win the stage. With Domen Novak, George Bennett and Jay Vine doing their best, the peloton was quickly decimated until Roglič, Yates, Vlasov and Vine were left in the leading group. Adam Yates attacked with 2.6 km to go and tried his best to challenge Roglič but the Slovenian was strong enough to follow without any issues. Similarly to the Picon Blanco ascent, Jay Vine returned to the trio as the pace slowed down but as he did under the flamme rouge, Yates again attacked and did the most pulling out of the GC leaders.
Yates’ efforts were not enough to drop Vlasov or Roglič, with the Slovenian winning another uphill sprint, securing his 76th and 77th pro victory and the 20th GC win of his career. Roglič has not lost a stage race in 2023 but La Vuelta against Remco Evenepoel, Juan Ayuso, Geraint Thomas, Joao Almeida and teammate Jonas Vingegaard should be his hardest challenge this year.
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As was the case on Stage 3, Yates did more work in the headwind than his rivals. The UAE-Emirates climber did 6.63 ᵉW/Kg for 14:34 min on the steep part of the climb. It was the second-fastest ascent of Lagunas de Neila, only losing to the mythical performance of Jose Maria Jimenez in 1998 who did it in 14 minutes. As we calculated only the steep part of the climb, the performance does not look incredible on the power x duration curve. However there was three warm up kilometres which were paced very hard by UAE-Emirates which would surely have had some fatiguing effect before they turned left onto the steep narrow final four kilometres. Despite not being in the Alps, Sierra Nevada or the Pyrenees, the final 15 minutes of Lagunas de Neila is also quite high, with the average altitude being 1,638 metres above sea level.