TakeVueltalast week
Pogačar didn't lose stage 8 — he'd already won the Vuelta up to that point, exactly as planned. He built his margin, banked three stage wins, then a rock on the road ended it 33km from a sprint finish nobody expected him to need surviving.
Stage 8 carried just 1,280m of climbing — one of the softest, safest days of the opening week, the kind GC riders coast through. His whole pre-race blueprint was building an early lead precisely to hedge against bad luck later; the crash arrived before "later" even started. Stage 6's gravel scare was Pogačar riding the edge and winning anyway — this was no edge at all, just a rock, on a stage built for recovery, not risk.
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