Vuelta a Espana Stage 12 - Rodriguez wins on the wall to extend his lead.

Today's Stage: The wall. A strange gimmick of a stage with no climbs until the final 2km and then a climb with sections reaching 30% gradients.

Who won today's stage? This stage seemed to be built for Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha), again. And he won again, dropping Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff) at the end.

What matters in the GC race? Rodriguez extended his lead over Contador to 13 seconds. Further down, Chris Froome (Team Sky) lost 23 seconds and got no time bonus leaving him 51 seconds down and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) lost 13 seconds and is now 1'20” behind.

What matters in the other competitions?

Green Jersey (Points) – As expected, Rodriguez took control of this jersey as well by winning the stage. Valverde is now second and former leader John Degenkolb (Argos-Shimano) fell to third, again.

Polka Dot Jersey (King of the Mountains, it's blue in Spain, not red) – Valverde continues to lead in this competition, but Rodriguez is now really close (only 2 points). The weekend stages should decide matters or at least inform the final classification before the Bola del Mundo climb.

White Jersey (Allround, instead of young rider, calculated by adding the rankings in GC, Points and KoM, lowest score wins) – With Rodriguez leading or second in every category, he will lead this until he cracks. If he does crack, Valverde is the likely beneficiary.

Team Classification (top 3 times by team on each stage) – Rabobank with its three top 10 GC riders was again the best on this stage, extending its lead further over Team Sky and AG2R La Mondiale.

Biggest surprise: Rodriguez dropped everyone along the way. He past successes in this race had been either by winning uphill sprints (stage 6) or by cagey moves that caught others off guard (escaping with Gilbert on stage 9). This move was something different as Rodriguez and Contador rode away from everyone else and then Rodriguez attacked Contador and dropped him with an explosive attack at then end.

Biggest disappointment: Froome was not very good today. He has seemed vulnerable since stage 8 and today was no exception as he was beaten not only by the other contenders, but by Robert Gesink (Rabobank) as well. While in a vacuum, losing to Gesink isn't a bad thing, in this race it isn't great given the issues Gesink has had staying with the leaders thus far (though he is fifth overall).

Other items of note: There was a crash today that caused two abandonments. Daniele Ratto (Lampre) and Xabier Zandio (Team Sky) were both forced to leave with their injuries with Zandio being injured far worse than Ratto.

What is coming tomorrow? Transitional stage with a flat run in. After the last two days with three days of insane high mountain climbing coming, that normally means breakaway. In this race though, it could mean sprint with no sprinters other than John Degenkolb having won a stage and a lack of sprint opportunities left. In addition, Degenkolb himself may want to win the stage in the quest for the green jersey.

Tomorrow's Prediction: Degenkolb. The other sprint teams will help Argos chase down the break and it will be a dumb decision as Degenkolb schools their sprinters again.