Vuelta Stage 14 - Rodriguez wins (again) Round 1 of the Circle of Death Climbs

Today's Stage: Circle of Death – Part 1. Five climbs including a finish on the brutal Puerto de Ancares climb.

Who won today's stage? Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha) has followed this script quite bit: Follow wheels and then use his superior finishing kick to take a few seconds and win the time bonus by winning the stage. Today was much the same with a slightly different story as Rodriguez was briefly dropped by Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff) before fighting back and passing him at the end.

What matters in the GC race? Rodriguez extended his lead over Contador to 22 seconds and also made it a two-man race for the overall victory. Chris Froome (Team Sky) struggled and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) is still being hurt seriously by the 50 seconds he lost on stage four because he was caught in a crash. Froome and Valverde are both 1'41” behind and neither seems able to match Rodriguez and Contador in the high mountains.

What matters in the other competitions?

Green Jersey (Points) – Rodriguez's win stretched his lead out a bit. His lead is now safe even if he scores no point tomorrow. Valverde is 2^nd and John Degenkolb (Argos-Shimano) in 3^rd.

Polka Dot Jersey (King of the Mountains, it's blue in Spain, not red) – Stage four winner Simon Clarke (Orica-GreenEdge) smartly went into the breakaway today to pick up points and in the process regained his lead in the competition even though he was dropped on the final climb and lost boatloads of time. Valverde and Rodriguez are tied for second.

White Jersey (Allround, instead of young rider, calculated by adding the rankings in GC, Points and KoM, lowest score wins) – Rodriguez still leads (as expected). Valverde will now wear the jersey instead of Contador as he no longer holds the Polka Dot jersey.

Team Classification (top 3 times by team on each stage) – Rabobank had a very bad day today. Robert Gesink dropped to from 5^th to 6^th place and Bauke Mollema dropped from 10^th to 15^th. With those results, Rabobank's lead in the team classification dropped to under 2 minutes over Team Sky.

Biggest surprise: Contador finally got away and was pegged back. All race, everyone had been waiting for Alberto Contador to lay down a big attack and finally drop everyone. He did it today, and it didn't matter. Joaquin Rodriguez seems to have learned from his defeat to Ryder Hesjedal at the Giro how to calculate his max and leave himself in range to peg anyone back. At this point, Contador is going to need to lay down a long attack the likes of which we haven't seen him do since the 2011 Giro on the Mt. Etna stage.

Biggest disappointment: There were a bunch of domestiques around well up the final climb. The amount of domestiques with the top climbers late in races is startling. Saxo Bank had a full train going today and Sky could have done that as well with the number of people they had until late in the stage. This is a big change from the racing in the Giro when nobody had domestiques anywhere near the end of any climbing stages. I think the racing is more entertaining when the top guys have to go mano-a-mano from early on.

Other items of note: Three more riders abandoned before the stage began with varying injuries/fatigue/fear of three days of torture for no real reason. JJ Rojas (Movistar) had a minor crash in the sprint yesterday, but decided to call it a race and head home to rest before the World Championships. Jurgen Van den Broeck (Lotto-Belisol) was never himself in this race after emptying the tank to finish 4^th at the Tour de France. With Van den Broeck out, teammate and domestique Jens Debusschere also dropped out... Quietly, Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) has had a great race. With most of his American compatriots not here because they raced the USA Pro Challenge during week 1, Talansky is carrying the US banner well. He is in 8^th place overall and would be in 6^th, fighting for 5^th if not for the debacle that was Garmin's Team Time Trial.

What is coming tomorrow? Circle of Death, part 2. The lead up to the big climbs isn't as hard tomorrow as it was today, but the finish is worse. Tomorrow brings the category 1 Alto del Mirador before finishing atop one of only three Beyond Category climbs in this race, the Lagos de Covadonga.

Tomorrow's Prediction: Is there any reason to deviate from the script? Rodriguez will limit losses early before overtaking Contador in the sprint at the end. I wonder if Contador will try something crazy like attack on the Mirador?