Egan Bernal rode to a notable fourth place on the mist-enshrouded summit of Limone Piemonte in the Vuelta a España, keeping pace with the top favourites and finishing just behind stage winner Jonas Vingegaard. Bernal combined good positioning, promising form and strong team support to be ideally placed in the uphill mass sprint. His recovery from a severe early-season 2022 crash has already produced a seventh place in the Giro d'Italia, and this result in his second Grand Tour of 2025 signals further progress. Team tactics and teammates' protection aided his morale and performance.
Uphill mass sprints for the line are not one of Bernal's best specialities, but his good positioning and promising form, as well as strong teamwork, all combined to leave him ideally placed for the final battle. The winner of the Tour de France back in 2019 and the Giro d'Italia in 2021, Bernal's long road to recovery after his terrible early-season crash in 2022 already saw him claim a major landmark with seventh in the Giro d'Italia.
It remains to be seen what he can now achieve in his second Grand Tour of 2025, but being up there with the main group of favourites certainly bodes well - and forming part of the quartet that claimed a narrow lead over the rest, albeit just two seconds, even more so. "I actually didn't think of fighting for the win. I started the stage with a different mindset," Bernal told Colombian TV reporters afterwards. "Yet I found myself at the front, and decided to try my luck."
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