Valverde takes third successive win at Ruta del Sol

Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) continued his dominance of the Vuelta a Andalucía, with his third consecutive stage victory on Friday.

The Spaniard maintained his calm as Sky decimated the peloton on the final climb to jump to the front at the right time. Valverde continues to lead the general classification, and is likely to do so until the final stage on Sunday.

Luis Leon Sanchez (Caja Rural) hung onto his coat tails to take second place. Daniel Navarro (Cofidis) made it a Spanish top three. Navarro, launched a number of attacks in the final 500 metres, but was unable to shed the remaining riders.

Despite the efforts of his Sky team, Richie Porte had to settle for fifth place and now sits 20 seconds behind Valverde in the general classification.

Grey skies and drizzling rain greeted the peloton ahead of stage 2. The temperatures were low enough to bring out the arm warmers for most. Seven men got away early on.

Of them, Tim Wellens (Lotto-Belisol) and Romain Zingle were the biggest threat to the lead of Alejandro Valverde, sitting 55 and 59 seconds down respectively. Joining them were Branislau Samoilau (CC Polsat), Andrey Zeits (Astana), Jordi Simón (Ecquador), Markel Irizar (Trek) and Simon Geschke (Giant-Shimano).

Movistar marshalled the seven riders very well. Without race radios available, the Spanish team didn't let the escape gain too much time. After reaching a maximum time of nearly four minutes, the gap was pegged at just over two minutes. Samoilau and Simon fell foul of the pace and dropped back into the peloton, leaving their five other companions to carry on up front.

With Valverde dominating the first two stages, the other teams were more than happy to let his Movistar team do all of the work. Sky sat just behind them with Richie Porte only 19 seconds off Valverde in the general classification.

Eventually the British team took to the front when they reached the foot of the final climb. After dropping out of the group surprisingly early yesterday, Bradley Wiggins did a long pull on the front of the group. His pace setting shed a large number of tired riders and left Valverde with only Jon Izagirre for company.

By the time the peloton reached the final kilometres of the stage, there were only very select few riders remaining in the front group. There were a number of attacks as the finish line neared but none could dispatch of the race leader Valverde, who moved to the front on the final corner to snatch victory.

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