Most people would look at Enric Mas’s palmarès and nod with approval: four Vuelta a España podium finishes in seven years, a win over Tadej Pogačar in the Giro dell’Emilia one-day race in 2022, and a handful of WorldTour victories. But inside Spain, his home country, adoration and respect for Mas is often in short supply.
A country that has been spoiled with general classification superstars since the 1940s, the hope was that Mas would seamlessly follow in the wheel tracks of Alberto Contador when El Pistolero retired in 2017, adding more Grand Tour victories to Spain’s tally of 48. But since Contador’s win at the 2015 Giro d’Italia, his third maglia rosa, no Spaniard has won a three-week race. It’s a historic drought.
And Movistar rider Mas, so often so close yet so far in his home Grand Tour, has borne the brunt of his nation’s impatience. Just two years ago, as Mas finished second in the Vuelta for a third time, a spectator chased him after a stage and called him a paquete – a colloquial term in Spanish used to call someone lousy or useless. The video went viral, people leapt to the Mallorcan rider’s defence, but social media (and occasional roadside) abuse of Mas persists.
Alejandro Valverde, who alongside Contador is Spain’s most successful rider this century, shakes his head in disbelief when asked about the treatment of Mas. “We’ve entered in a loop where this is just the way it is,” Valverde tells Rouleur of the vitriol his former teammate is subject to. “And I don’t know why they criticise him. When he attacks from afar, they criticise him; when he comes up short, they also criticise him. I don’t understand it.
“I think Spanish fans attack riders who don’t attack, but to attack for attacking’s sake doesn’t make sense. Enric thinks a lot, and for this reason people criticise him. When someone doesn’t feel 100%, they try to avoid errors and minimise risks and therefore don’t attack, and everyone is like this. Enric is a 10/10 rider and does everything he can.”
At the 2024 Vuelta, Mas went on the attack several times in an effort to claw back time on eventual winner Primož Roglič and long-time leader Ben O’Connor, winning over some doubters, but not all en route to third place. “He has shown with three second-places at the Vuelta that he has a Vuelta win in his legs,” Valverde says. After a disappointing Tour de France, it was further evidence of Mas’s tendency to finish a season in his best shape. “Every year he has a stronger end to the season. He’s always good in the Vuelta and then in the Italian Classics,” Valverde highlights.
So what lets the soon-to-be 30-year-old down at the Tour? “The pressure gets to him,” Valverde says. “It’s a little bit of his weak point. It happened to me as well: you arrive and you have the pressure of the team and everyone else behind you and it makes it harder. The Vuelta is more relaxed, it goes quicker, and being more relaxed is when he performs better. The Tour is always very hard.”
It is thought that Mas could eschew the Tour in 2025 and instead make his Giro d’Italia debut before returning to the Vuelta later in the year. “Maybe it would be good to try the Giro to see what it’s like, how he feels,” former world champion Valverde suggests. “It’s a hard race, but it’s calmer, more relaxed. He could look to do the Giro and Vuelta, see how it is. But the Tour is the Tour, and the best [Movistar] team for the GC is with Enric, so it also depends on the sponsors.”
Mas has struggled under the pressure of the Tour de France (Zac Williams/SWpix.com)
Since Valverde’s retirement at the end of the 2022 season, Movistar have struggled for regular wins, picking up just eight victories in 2024 – their lowest total since 1981, outside the Covid year of 2020. Yet despite the paucity of success, they did manage to beat better-resourced teams to the signature of Pablo Castrillo, the surprise winner of two Vuelta stages.
“What he did in this year’s Vuelta was really good,” Valverde says of Castrillo, 24 in January. “He was always at the front and is a rider with a big future, but personally I don’t know where they’ll place him for Grand Tours and one-week stage races. He’s going to achieve big things, but I don’t want to state what exactly: stages or GC.”
Valverde, who still competes for Movistar in their gravel squad, accepts that Spain’s only WorldTour team can’t compete against the sport’s richest, but does believe that they can continue to play a vital part in the development of riders, like they did with Matteo Jorgenson and Oier Lazkano.
“With Jorgenson, I don’t think he could have had a better team to make that jump [to Visma-Lease a Bike] and to improve,” Valverde says. “He grew a lot with the team and you have to respect that he left. With Lazkano it’s the same: he grew here, and now he makes the step [to Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe]. We can’t fight with the budget of other teams. It’s clear that we have UAE, Visma and Ineos who are dominant, but this year Movistar have had riders who’ve done well also. There are young riders who’ve grown and next year they’ll make another step.”
Cover image by Getty Images
