Three days on from La Vuelta Femenina, it’s time to look back at a week of racing that injected new excitement into women’s racing. A peloton of young, fierce new riders won stages, controlled the race – and won the overall – as the peloton tackled a climb once deemed the hardest in professional cycling. La Vuelta 2026 well and truly shook things up.
The take over
A penny for Anna van der Breggen’s thoughts. The 36-year-old former world champion finished second at last week’s Vuelta España Femenina having been deposed by 23-year-old Paul Blasi on the final stage, just ahead of 21-year-old Marion Bunel.
SD Worx-Protime’s Van der Breggen won her first Grand Tour, what is now the Giro d’Italia Women, in 2015, years before her fellow podium finishers had even become adults.
This felt like a changing of the guard moment, as Blasi of UAE Team ADQ, who only turned professional a year ago, became the first Spanish winner of the Vuelta, and the youngest overall victor by a significant margin. She only won her first Women’s WorldTour Race, Amstel Gold, last month, and now she is a Grand Tour winner, in her debut at an event this long. Just over two years ago, Blasi was a runner, not a full-time cyclist, so her advance is incredible.
Five of the seven stages were won by riders aged 25 or under, with Noemi Rüegg and Cédrine Kerbaol (both EF Education-Oatly) winning stages one and three at 25 and 24, respectively, Shari Bossuyt (AG Insurance-Soudal), winning her first WorldTour race at 25 on stage two, and Mischa Bredewold (SD Worx-Protime) winning stage five at 25, despite racing at the top level since 2023. The final L’Angliru stage was won by Petra Stiasny (Human Powered Health), herself only 24.
Meanwhile, riders like Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift winners Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) both finished lower down on GC, the former a respectable eighth, while the latter finished 35th, although her teammate did finish third overall.
In a poetic finale to the Spanish race, Blasi’s victory coincided with Mavi García’s (UAE Team ADQ) last race. The 42-year-old Spaniard will leave the sport as her compatriot’s star has only just begun to rise.
Paula Blasi: the present or the future?
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A few months ago, Blasi was an unfamiliar name. She wasn’t even meant to compete in the race that shot her into the limelight, until illness and injury led to her last-minute addition to the UAE Team ADQ squad for the Amstel Gold Race last month.
Now, just three weeks later, she is the overall victor of La Vuelta, winning against some of the most established riders in the women’s peloton: Van der Breggen, Niewiadoma, and Ferrand-Prévot.
La Vuelta confirms Blasi’s credentials. No longer is she a wild card with a career-defining day at the Amstel Gold Race; she’s a Grand Tour winner and a versatile rider capable of winning a week-long stage race. While her dominance in these last two races could indicate her future potential, her success has also made her a threat now. What will UAE Team ADQ do with her?
More L’Angliru, please
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Considered one of the most demanding mountain passes in professional cycling, L’Angliru rises at an average gradient of 9.7% over 13 kilometres, clocking up 1,266 metres of vertical ascent. 2026 marked the first year that the women’s race visited the mountain that formed the dramatic finale of six days of racing.
Before L’Angliru’s inclusion in the race, La Vuelta’s technical director, Kiko García, told Cyclingnews that teams were in two minds about whether to include the mountain, or “maybe just wait a couple of years’ because we were still building women’s cycling”.
On the slopes of L’Angliru, Stiasny (who, at 24-year-old is another of the race’s dominant youngsters) of Human Powered Health pushed past Blasi to take the biggest win of her career – a minute ahead of fourth-placed Van der Breggen.
Not only was L’Angliru the scene of the first Spanish victory in the La Vuelta’s history, but it also proved that the women’s peloton is more than capable of scaling mountains of this size – and creating exciting racing there, too.
SD Worx-Protime aren’t done yet
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They may have lost some of their star riders before 2025 (Demi Vollering, Marlen Reusser and Niamh Fisher-Black to name but three), but SD Worx-Protime are still a force to be reckoned with.
Lotte Kopecky showed her dominance in the first half of the race, finishing second in both the first and third stages (though she faced relegation for irregular sprinting on stage two). Stage four was won by the Belgian in a sprint-finish, with Anna van der Breggen finishing just behind her teammate. Mischa Bredewold also won stage five. Bredewold forewent her leadout duties for Kopecky to storm to victory herself, a 20th pro win. Kopecky would end the week with the green points jersey.
In a race dominated by younger riders, Van der Breggen both proved her consistent capabilities. The 36-year-old won the summit finish on Stage 6 in an impressive climb that saw her clinch the red jersey, and come second in the GC.
Though not back to their record-setting form (they won 85 times across 148 Women’s World Tour races in 2023 and 2024), Kopecky remains an explosive asset in the team’s arsenal, accompanied by a dominant Van der Breggen.
What are FDJ United-SUEZ without Vollering?
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The absence of Demi Vollering in La Vuelta Femenina’s 2026 line up was noticeable, especially as she has won the last two. The Dutch rider has had a blistering start to the year, with victories in a roster of Spring Classics (as well as GC in the Volta Femenina), but had decided to drop La Vuelta in favour of the Giro d’Italia Women.
There were two FDJ United-Suez riders in the top 10 at the end of the week, Juliette Berthet and Évita Muzic, but this is as good as it got for the team overall. Franziska Koch wore red for a couple of stages, but the team wasn’t top of the pile, as we have come to expect.
