TakeVuelta6 days ago
The UCI is granting exceptional authorizations to hand up multiple bottles at once at stage 11 of the Vuelta a España 2026 — a rare mid-race break from its own feeding rules. That's not caution, that's enforcement: the heat has already crossed into dangerous.
Tadej Pogačar was complaining he couldn't get a bottle in the final 20km of stage 6 two days before his crash — this problem predates today's rule change by a stage's worth of racing. A heat dome is now forecast to bake the Iberian Peninsula for several days, with stage 11 into Lorca expected in the mid-90s Fahrenheit. The UCI already used this same exception twice at the Tour de France 2026 as temperatures neared 40°C — this isn't novel, it's the same protocol firing again.