Valverde wins stage 6 of the Vuelta a Espana

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Alejandro Valverde moved back into pole position at the Vuelta a Espana when he won the first summit finish of the race at La Zubia. Valverde had enough finishing punch to edge out Chris Froome (Sky) and Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) at the end of a thrilling stage contested fiercely by all of the race's biggest names. The victory put him back into the leader's red jersey which he had ceded to Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) in Arcos de la Frontera three days ago.

For much of the day, it seemed that the two-man break featuring Lotto-Belisol's Pim Ligthart and Caja Rural's mountains leader Luis Mas Bonet might go all the way, but the pair were reeled on the brutal final ascent 3km away from glory. Apparently playing the role of back-up man, Valverde took on the pace-making for teammate Nairo Quintana with 2km left, the pair briefly discussing their tactics as their main GC rivals sat in behind them.

Katusha's Joaquim Rodríguez had been talked up as the favourite for the stage, so it was little surprise when he attacked with 700 metres left. For a few moments, it appeared that the little Spanish climber would stay clear of the select group behind, but Froome and Valverde both responded to the attack. More surprising was the performance of Contador, who has played down his GC hopes, but was right on their wheels.

When Valverde surged inside the final 200 metres, Froome and Contador responded well but were unable to match the Movistar rider's powerful acceleration. Both, though, finished in the same time as Valverde, who now leads Quintana by 15 seconds, Contador by 18 and Froome by 22.

"It was a good and hard-earned victory," Valverde told RTVE. "It was a difficult finish, but I felt like I had good legs, I felt really good. I know this area really well. I just set a good rhythm from the bottom and Nairo told me that I should just keep going, but I kept a little bit back. When Purito attacked I went after him, and then went for the line."

Valverde revealed he doesn't know whether he'll be able to maintain his form through to the end of the race and challenge for the title, but expects Quintana to feature strongly on the mountain stages ahead. As for Contador, he said, "I'm not surprised by his performance. I knew that he was in good shape. He's perhaps not 100%, but he is here to win the Vuelta."

Contador's Tinkoff-Saxo DS Steven de Jongh said that today's goal "was to put Alberto in a good position entering the foot of the climb and the boys did a very good job guiding him in the finale. From there, we didn't really know what to expect after his crash during the Tour and the break from racing so I guess he took us all by surprise today and naturally I'm more than happy with this result. However, we still have to go easy, take the race stage by stage and see how things are going."

How it unfolded

The action was frenetic right from the start. Lotto-Belisol's Pim Ligthart and Caja Rural's mountains leader Luis Mas Bonet accelerated away in the first kilometre. For the next few kilometres, several groups attempted to bridge across to them, but all were chased down by the peloton, leaving just the two riders to make the long bid for glory.

Their advantage edged up initially, reaching four minutes after 22km. Then, as the peloton eased off, it ballooned to more than 14 minutes after 45km. As Ligthart and Mas Bonet started up the first categorised climb, the Alto de Zafarraya, Garmin moved to the front of the bunch and their pace-making began to reduce the gap to the leading pair.

When Mas Bonet took maximum points and extended his lead in the mountains classification on the summit of the Zafarraya, the two escapees were less than 10 minutes ahead. Mas Bonet also took maximum points on the Alto de los Bermejales, where he and Ligthart still led by almost nine minutes with 55km remaining.

Garmin had been doing most of the chasing, but going into the final 40km of the stage, with Ligthart and Mas Bonet still seven-and-a-half minutes clear, the rest of the peloton woke up. Katusha and Movistar put riders on the front to aid the pursuit, which quickly became very heated.

The two-man break still held a handy lead of five minutes with 24km to the line, but their advantage began to tumble until it was less than 30 seconds going onto the final 4km climb. Ligthart attempted one final effort but, with 3km to go, Cofidis's Christophe Le Mével swept past him with the peloton right on his heels.

Katusha, Movistar, Garmin, Tinkoff and Sky were all to the fore, their mutual surveillance giving Cannondale's George Bennett the opportunity to steal away for what was a very brief foray. Then Valverde took control and, despite Rodríguez's attempt to wrest it from him, maintained it all the way to the line.

Results

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