Stage 16 may have been a difficult day for the Vuelta a España but it was a day of celebration for Ineos Grenadiers, as Egan Bernal triumphed on the shortened finish to claim his first Grand Tour win since his life-threatening 2022 crash, and the team’s second in this year’s race.
The disruption from pro-Palestine protests meant that Bernal didn’t get the finish line photo or podium presentation he might have been dreaming of but Ineos found their own way of celebrating when they got back to the hotel.
The two victims of the clippers – seemingly wielded by Filippo Ganna and his impressive head of curly hair – were Bernal’s long-term friend Brandon Rivera, and Michal Kwiatkowski, the rider Turner credited for his wins both in Spain and the Tour de Pologne.
We made a dealStage win = shaved head@Eganbernal delivered, @_brandon_2103 got picked on Monday, I volunteered somehow 🫣@BobJungels get your trimmer ready for today 😉 pic.twitter.com/96I722PK6BSeptember 10, 2025
Turner’s win completed Ineos’ set of wins across all three Grand Tour wins this year, and Bernal’s success marked a final-week salvation of his race, after slipping out of GC contention.
Bernal’s victory on the shortened stage 16 was also his first win outside of the national championships since his horrific, life-threatening crash in 2022, with his last win at the Giro d’Italia in 2021.
His first Grand Tour victory in four years may have come in a strange way, but he outsprinted Mikel Landa (Soudal-QuickStep) after the pair had worked their way out of the day’s breakaway, and into a solid lead in the finale.
“Until the really last moment, we were always on the right foot. Actually when they said the finish line would be changed to eight kilometres [to go] I was already alone with Landa,” Bernal explained.
“It was kind of even a funny thing. We were like ‘where is the finish line now? What do we do? Okay we just sprint now’. In…
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