Vuelta a Espana Stage 4 Review - New leader... Again

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)

Olympic Time Trial Review

LONDON - Road cycling is basically the Bradley Wiggins show now. Wiggins (Great Britain) followed up his recent Tour de France overall victory with a Gold Medal in the Individual Time Trial today. The win was no shock as Wiggins gained much of his huge Tour de France lead on the back of his time trial abilities (he was second in the prologue and won both long time trials).

In the time trial Wiggins beat World Champion Tony Martin (Germany) by 42 seconds after trailing at the first time check, but that was expected as Wiggins gets much better as time trials go on and Martin is still recovering from his injuries both in the early season and in his stage 1 crash at the Tour de France.

Further down the standings, Tour de France runner up (and Wiggins teammate) Chris Froome (Great Britain) took the bronze over Taylor Phinney (United States). For Phinney, the result was his second 4^th of the Olympics. While a disappointment for him to not medal, he is only 22 and will have many chances over the coming year in both the Olympics and World Championships.

As for defending champion Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland), he finished 7^th while obviously uncomfortable on his bike after his crash in the road race on Saturday. Still, he gave a good effort as he was 3^rd at the first time check and 4^th and the other two before fading at the end.

For Wiggins, the win caps one of the greatest seasons in road cycling history. Nobody had managed to win the week-long stage races of Paris-Nice, the Tour of Romandie and the Criterium du Dauphine in the same season. It got better after that with his Tour de France win (the crown jewel of the wins) and then he added the cherry on top with his time trial victory today.

In addition, Wiggins became the most decorated British Olympic athlete ever with his 7^th career Olympic medal (three gold). The previous medals all came on the track with a bronze in 2000, a gold, a silver and a bronze in 2004 and two golds in 2008.

Next up for Wiggins is a possible run at the World Time Trial Championship in September. He was second to Martin last year. Beyond that, it is likely that he will being prepping for next season as he is unlikely to race the Vuelta a Espana and there are no major targets other than the Time Trial Championship that suit his abilities until next year.

Sorry no pictures today, I was on time check duty on the course today.