John Degenkolb ended a great three weeks for Giant-Alpecin by finally winning a sprint, his tenth in Vuelta history, to go with two stages, a stint in red and sixth overall by Tom Dumoulin. The big German was powerful enough to make use of his great leadout to hold off Danny van Poppel (Trek) and Jempy Drucker (BMC) in the final, as Fabio Aru crossed the line to take his first ever Grand Tour win.

The processional ride in Madrid was very ceremonial and with 58km from 99 remaining, Astana finished their ceremonial duties by leading to bunch over the finish line for the first time. Immediately the pace was ratcheted up by Movistar, as they wanted to win the next intermediate sprint so Valverde could take another Green Jersey.

He duly beat two teammates to the line on the end of lap one to take the jersey from Katusha’s Joaquim Rodriguez on the final day for the second time in his career, doing so in 2012 too.

Benjamin King (Cannondale-Garmin), Matteo Montaguti (Ag2r-La Mondiale), Omar Fraile (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Laurent Pichon (FDJ), Carlos Verona (Etixx-Quick Step) and Giovanni Visconti (Movistar), attacked off the back of that and that formed the day’s break.

They never gained more than 30 seconds under a Trek, Giant-Alpecin and BMC led bunch and with 8km to go, they were hauled back in. this prompted Verona’s teammate Iljo Keisse to attack and try and repeat another final day win, mimicking what he did in Milan at the Giro this year. Just after the bell to signal the final lap, Keisse was joined by AG2R’s stage 19 winner Alexis Gougeard. They maintained a small gap and with 4km to go, Keisse sat up and 200m later, Gougeard was also brought back.

Sky’s Christian Knees as next to attack but he never gained much ground as MTN-Qhubeka were working with the three other sprint teams.

Orica-GreenEDGE joined the pace making and Giant-Alpecin launched their leadout just under the flamme rouge and despite Degenkolb going early, no one got close to him as he took a win that came as a huge relief to the two-time Monument winner. Aru sat up in the end to celebrate with his teammates, losing ten seconds to the bunch, but he still beat Rodriguez by a healthy 57 seconds and Tinkoff-Saxo’s Rafal Majka took his first Grand Tour podium with third. The top ten was unchanged.

Aru took home the red jersey for overall, Fraile took the KOM jersey, which he has had won for a few days now and Valverde won another green jersey. The white combined jersey was taken by Rodriguez, surprisingly for the first time in his great career. Movistar was the best team.