Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) started stage 20 with three goals in mind: regain the Vuelta a España podium, win a stage, and maintain his lead for the Best Young Rider award, but in the end, the young Colombian came away empty-handed.

Astana's Vuelta a España was not a failure in anyone's eyes, with Lopez taking two stage wins and a three-day lead in the first week, as well as the Best Young Rider jersey and a de facto podium lead for an extended period.

However, despite Lopez launching strong individual attacks on both mountain stages in week 3 and working hard to pull back the breakaway on stage 20, as his team has done on almost every alpine stage, he fell off at the final post.

The Colombian attacked several times on the uphill of the Peña Negra category 1 climb on stage 20, prompting the final two survivors of the day, Tao Geoghegan Hart (Team Ineos) and Ruben Guerreiro (Katusha-Alpecin), to pull the curtain back.

But after an impressive attack by Tadei Pogachar (UAE Team Emirates) 38km from the finish, Lopez looked as if he had been defeated and even struggled to contend with the other overall contenders on the final climb to Plataforma de Gredos

Lopez was also the only one to win the race.

Lopez finally lost 2:12 to Pogachar and lost time to Nairo Quintana on the final climb, dropping him to fifth place in the Vuelta a España final overall. But he took his defeat bravely.

"I didn't feel good, I couldn't even get the riders in front of me in the break of the day, that tactic didn't work," Lopez told reporters after putting on his warm-up gear at the finish.

"Ideally, I could have had two or three guys go to the front in the early break and work from there," - a tactic that worked well for Astana in the Andorra stage until Lopez crashed in the rainy Stellata section before the final climb.

"Despite that, we kept trying, but it didn't work. We must congratulate Roglic, Pogachar, and Valverde for their podiums.

Regarding his attack on Peña Negra, López said, "We rolled the dice many times, but we had no luck.

"I lost the Best Young Rider jersey, but I don't care because I have several in my house. I'm 25 now, so this year was my last chance. But it's time for other riders to win this rank. I'm getting old, too," he joked.

Lopez said that the injuries he sustained when he and Primoš Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) fell in a crash on stage 19, which he initially dismissed as relatively minor, were actually worse than he had revealed.

"I think that's the effect. The injury was sore all the time. Then it was the third week, so at this point everyone was pretty tired and things weren't going well. But I can only be happy with what we have achieved in this year's Vuelta."

Lopez has won races like the Catalunya Volta by attacking on long, shallow climbs like the Sierra de Gredos stage. However, he said he was unable to gain an advantage when it mattered.

"The only problem was that there was a strong headwind, and no matter how many times we tried we could not increase the gap. When the young player [Pogacar] attacked we hesitated for a moment.

As to whether or not he thought it was possible to regain enough time to get on the podium, Lopez insisted: "They [his rivals] were just a centimeter behind us. I knew they [the rivals] wouldn't give me a centimeter, and I knew it would be mission impossible if I didn't have support in front of me at the break. But I did my best. 0]

Even if he failed to achieve his goal of a final summit finish and a last chance at this year's Vuelta, at least at the start of stage 20 Lopez managed to bridge the gap with Movistar over the controversy that erupted during stage 19.

After his post-stage tirade against the Spanish team, Lopez said, "I was calm in the hotel. The last few kilometers of that stage were chaos.

"But when I thought about it, I realized I had gone too far. I apologized to Valverde because it was the right thing to do. We are all human and sometimes we make mistakes. The important thing is to recognize that."