Stiasny Becomes The First Woman To Solo To L'Angliru As Human Powered Health Land A Career-Defining Grand Tour Stage
Petra Stiasny has authored the most extraordinary single-rider performance of the 2026 women's spring, soloing to victory atop the Alto de L'Angliru on Stage 7 of La Vuelta Femenina from a twelve-kilometre attack that nobody in the race could answer. The twenty-four-year-old Slovakian, racing in her second WorldTour season with Human Powered Health, crossed the line 23 seconds clear of Paula Blasi to become the first woman to win atop the most punishing climb in professional cycling.
It was a first WorldTour victory for Stiasny — and a first Grand Tour stage win in any women's calendar for Human Powered Health, the American-licensed second-tier outfit that has spent three seasons quietly developing climbers behind the WorldTour ranks. The result transforms Stiasny's career outlook in the space of a single afternoon and puts a long-overdue marker down for the team that took a chance on her after her breakthrough U23 European Championship in 2024.
Stiasny attacked early, slipping clear on the lower slopes of Las Cabanas while the GC group was still policing itself for the Blasi-versus-Van der Breggen confrontation that had been brewing all week. By the time the race-deciding ramps of the Angliru proper came into view, Stiasny was riding alone with a 1:40 advantage and the favourites still glaring at one another over the wheel. The Slovakian's pacing was textbook — deliberate, controlled, with a measurable 6.0-watts-per-kilogram threshold reading across the steepest twelve-minute Cueña Les Cabres segment.
Behind, the GC battle Blasi eventually won was steadily eating into her advantage, but Stiasny held her form through the final kilometre and crossed the line with enough margin to celebrate. "This is my happy place," she said in the immediate finish-line interview, having spoken openly about her admiration for the Angliru since the route was announced. "I've been dreaming of this climb since I was watching it on television as a kid."
The win was as historic for the climb as it was for the rider. Women have been climbing the Angliru in the modern Vuelta since 2024, but on every previous occasion the stage had been decided by a chase pack rather than a solo. Stiasny's effort — deep into a five-hour final day in the Asturias, on slopes that touch 23.5% — reframes what the climb can produce in a women's race and gives the discipline its first definitive Angliru moment.
For Human Powered Health, the implications are immediate. A first Grand Tour stage win materially shifts the team's UCI ranking trajectory and improves their case for a 2027 WorldTour licence under the points-based promotion system. Stiasny's contract runs through 2027, and director Cherie Pridham confirmed after the stage that the next block would build toward the Giro d'Italia Donne and a Tour de France Femmes mountain card.
The bigger story remained the GC turnaround behind — Blasi's 24-second overhaul of Anna van der Breggen to win La Vuelta overall — but Stiasny's solo will be remembered as the moment a new climber announced herself to the WorldTour. For a team that has spent three years on the development circuit, and for a rider whose previous career-best WorldTour result was a top-ten in the Tour of Norway, this was the kind of afternoon that reshapes everything that comes next.