Today's Stage: Circle of Death –
Part 2. The easy one of the three. Only three climbs, but the final
one was the fearsome Lagos de Covadonga.
Who won today's stage? Antonio
Piedra (Caja Rural) finally chose a correct break for his team (i.e.
one that stays away) and paid it off by attacking at the bottom of
the Lagos de Covadonga, winning the stage by over 2 minutes.
What matters in the GC race?
Overall leader leader Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha), Alberto Contador
(Saxo Bank-Tinkoff) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) finished
together, but without Chris Froome (Team Sky) who was dropped and
hung on for dear life just to stay with the second group of GC men.
Froome lost 35 seconds more on the leaders and saw his chances at the
podium start to slip away.
What matters in the other
competitions?
Green Jersey (Points) – The
breakaway picked up most of the points, but Rodriguez and Valverde
did a score a small amount to extend further away from John Degenkolb
(Argos-Shimano). Rodriguez is the leader but Valverde will be wearing
the jersey as Rodriguez is the overall leader.
Polka Dot Jersey (King of the
Mountains, it's blue in Spain, not red) – Simon Clarke
(Orica-GreenEdge) didn't get himself in the breakaway today, but he
retains his lead here. Rodriguez is 2nd and Valverde 3rd
as none of the contenders scored points.
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 is second and Contador is third. Froome is fourth but
falling further behind every day as he is in the GC battle.
Team Classification (top 3 times by
team on each stage) – The entire race was remade today.
Movistar had a man in the break and then had another with Valverde.
They now lead by 2'52” over Euskatel who also had a man in the
break and a domestique with team leader Igor Anton. Former leaders
Rabobank have seen their hopes here explode with the cracking of
Bauke Mollema the last two days. The team is now over six minutes
behind and will need to find a successful breakaway to get the time
back.
Biggest surprise: The breakaway
got away and stayed away. With the exception of stage four, no
breakaways have been allowed to go the whole race. The peloton has
limited matters and then swept up the break up with plenty of time to
go (Stage 12's breakaway win was an exception to this, but it was
never allowed much time and Argos-Shimano just failed in its attempts
to pull it back). Today, it just didn't care. The top riders rode
tempo until the end and the break enjoyed a huge lead that including
Piedra gaining over nine minutes on the leaders (not that it really
helps him there as he is still over an hour behind).
Biggest disappointment: Nobody
can make an attack stick. While this has been very entertaining, we
are most certainly into a pattern with the racing: Contador or
Valverde attacks, Rodriguez pegs it back, yo-yo with that for awhile,
sometimes Valverde is dropped, Rodriguez wins uphill sprint unless
Valverde is still there, then there is a battle for the win. It would
be nice to see an attack go and work (see Thomas de Gendt at Giro
d'Italia).
Other items of note: Two more
casualties of the race bring the total to 15 men out of the race.
Olivier Kaisen (Lotto-Belisol) and Rafael Valls (Vaconsoleil) both
are out of the race.
What is coming tomorrow? Circle
of Death, part 3, the hardest of this circle of climbing. Tomorrow
starts with a simple category 3 climb, then climbs two category one
climbs before finishing atop the beyond category Cuitu Negru for the
first time ever.
Tomorrow's Prediction: Rodriguez
will win stage and likely the Vuelta followed by Contador and
Valverde, same as its been.
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