Today's Stage: Remember
yesterday with the early mountaintop finish that would never be seem
in the Tour de France. Repeat. Different climb, another mountaintop
finish.
Who won today's stage? Simon
Clarke (Orica-GreenEdge) beat Tony Martin (OPQS) in a two-up sprint
at the top of the mountain after they were the only two survivors
from the breakaway that went away early in the stage.
What matters in the GC race?
There were crosswinds. Crosswinds cause problems. Crosswinds cause
lots of problems when a team attacks on the front. This happened
before the final climb and it caught race leader Alejandro Valverde
(Movistar) in a crash when riders were trying to move to the front.
Then, in a matter of breaking one of cyclings unwritten rules (sit up
and wait for the race leader when he crashes), everyone drilled it on
the front of the peloton (more on this later). The peloton collapsed
into many different groups and Valverde and his group got left
behind, never making it back to the lead group. With this, Movistar
sent Benat Intxausti back to help Valverde allowing Joaquin Rodriguez
(Katusha) to assume the race lead. Chris Froome (Team Sky) is one
second behind and Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank) is five seconds
behind.
What matters in the other
competitions?
Green Jersey (Points) – The
three stage winners have the most points, but today's stage winner
Simon Clarke has the jersey as he picked up points at one of the
intermediate sprints today. He has 27 and stage winners Alejandro
Valverde and John Degenkolb (Argos-Shimano) have 25.
Polka Dot Jersey (King of the
Mountains, it's blue in Spain, not red) – As a mountaintop
stage winner that was in the breakaway, Clarke also holds this jersey
over yesterday's top breakaway attacker, Pim Ligthart (Vacansoleil).
White Jersey (Allround, instead of
young rider, calculated by adding the rankings in GC, Points and KoM,
lowest score wins) – This category usually ends up going to a
GC man with a finishing kick and it already looks that way this year.
Joaquin Rodriguez leads followed by Valverde, Chris Froome and
Alberto Contador.
Team Classification (top 3 times by
team on each stage) – Rabobank leads this competition. That is
no surprise as they were highly ranked in the Team Time Trial and
have three riders in the top ten overall (Robert Gesink, Bauke
Mollema and Laurens Ten Dam).Behind them is Team Sky who have three
riders within a minute of the overall lead (Chris Froome, Rigoberto
Uran and Sergio Henao).
Biggest surprise: Movistar sent
Intxausti back to help Valverde. When they did so, it was obvious
Valverde wasn't making it back to the lead group. Given that,
Intxausti should have stayed with the lead group in an attempt to
retain the leader's red jersey.
Biggest disappointment: Wither
Igor Anton (Esukatel). Anton just hasn't been the same rider since
blowing up the day after his stage win in the 2011 Giro d'Italia. At
that point he had crashed out with the lead in the 2010 Vuelta and
won a stage and looked set for the podium in the Giro. After that, he
never really fired except for the Basque stage last year. This year,
he basically did nothing all season while targeting the Vuelta. And
then he cracked today on the climb. Just not good.
Other items of note: About that
unwritten rule that was broken: Today was payback. All season long,
Movistar has attacked at the time of others misfortune. While others
have often sat up when the race leaders crashed, the chance to pay
Movistar back for a season of unpopular riding was irresistible and
Valverde paid for it by giving up his leader's jersey... At the USA
Pro Cycling Challenge, Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Sharp) turned himself
inside out to get over the climb and then blew everyone away in the
final sprint. Today that race finishes at Crested Butte where Levi
Leipheimer (OPQS) won last year to take the race lead and set himself
up for his GC victory.
What is coming tomorrow? Sprint
stage. The most obvious one of the whole race outside of the final
stage in Madrid. It is a circuit race with seven 21km circuits around
Logroño.
Tomorrow's Prediction: John
Degenkolb (Argos-Shimano), Elia Viviani (Liquigas-Cannondale), Ben
Swift (Orica-GreenEdge)
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