Vuelta a España Haunted By Red-Haired Viral Video Prankster
The Vuelta a España, long the runt sibling among cycling’s Grand Tours, promised to be bigger and better than usual this year, thanks primarily to the participation of Tadej Pogacar. The protests that stymied last year’s race had successfully de-Israelized the peloton, and the 2026 edition had the glitz of a Monaco start, the showcase of the best rider in the world going for the win, and an interesting, adversarial course. But this is the Vuelta, where weird stuff happens, and the race stumbled into a controversy of its own making on its very first day because the organizers hired a viral vertical-video prankster to promote it.
Meet Erola Jons. The 28-year-old Catalan influencer has racked up millions of followers (and presumably millions of Euros) by going around with a tiny microphone and pranking unsuspecting passersby by pretending to flirt with them. The Vuelta gave Jons an all-access pass with the idea that she could take people behind the scenes, interview riders and staffers, and bring all 21 stages to the world.
This gambit hasn’t gone well, and I can’t really blame Jons. The Vuelta hired her because she’s a charismatic troublemaker, and making trouble is exactly what she’s done at the race. The problem is that the cycling world is a terrible fit for her editorial sensibility and commitment to mischief.
It’s one thing to ask a random guy on the street about his body count or to name an album that makes him say “That’s vibes frfr …”; bugging professional cyclists and their teams in that way, in the middle of a Grand Tour, is another thing entirely. Those guys don’t want to talk to anyone, and they take their jobs very seriously. Having apparently prepared neither the riders nor Jons for how the other party would carry themselves, the Vuelta let her loose. Jons predictably did her thing and made everyone mad.
In the one longform vlog Jons produced for the Vuelta YouTube, she lurks around the finish podium, interviewing fans and displaying a concerning lack of awareness for the grieving process. Around 11 minutes in, Jons finds a stray NetCompany-Ineos staffer and asks him, “You are here to distract the journalists? Are you here to win, or to distract me? Because you’re cute, you know?” The staffer is extremely perplexed—again, these people have no idea who Jons is—and he gets his ass out of there once he realizes what’s going on. She tries to bug third-place finisher Josh Tarling, who walks away as well. “I don’t think he likes interviews, much less mine,” she says. “But I have 20 stages to win him over—don’t worry, I’ll win him over quickly.” Tarling is racing the Vuelta only one week after his 19-year-old brother Finlay was killed by a driver who came onto the course at the Vuelta a Portugal last week. This was the biggest story in cycling for a week, and something I assume everyone else at the Vuelta knows about.
Near the 30-minute mark, Jons finally gets in position to talk to Pogacar. What she says is, “Pogachitar, congratulations. Why do you hyperventilate every time you see me?” He is confused, and asks “What?” to which she replies “You breathe.” Pogacar responds, “I breathe 24/7,” which is great. UAE press officer Luke Maguire (who, balls-and-strikes, is one of the best in the business) sees what is going on and gets in the way. Jons says to the camera that Pogacar “is a lot better-looking close-up, guys,” and later adds, “I don’t know how this boy is doing in the general classification, but in mine he’s first.”
The backlash to this was swift. UAE lodged an official complaint, several Spanish commentators decried Jons’s juvenilia, and the Vuelta restricted her official access by the third stage. She’s no longer allowed to interview riders without team permission, and she can’t lurk around the podium area anymore. The Vuelta hired Jons to be a clown, and she did what she was brought there to do. The baffling part is how anybody in cycling thought that would be a good idea in the first place.
