Vuelta a Espana: Chaves wins stage 6

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Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) made up for the disappointment of the previous day as he snatched the red jersey back from the shoulders of Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) on the uphill finish on the Alto de Cazorla on stage 6 of the Vuelta a Espana.

Yesterday the Colombian fell foul of a late split, losing the race lead he had held since stage 2, and here he struck out for redemption with just over two kilometres remaining on the short, sharp final climb. Dumoulin had no choice but to set off in pursuit and ended up third, five seconds back, after Dan Martin pipped him to the line.

The finale provided a similar platform for Chaves to recover the jersey to the one at Caminito del Rey where he took it in the first place. The 25-year-old now leads the general classification from Dumoulin by 10 seconds due to the allocation of bonus seconds, while Martin, fourth at Caminito del Rey and second here, is third at 33 seconds.

“I can’t believe I’ve won. It was a long, hot, hard stage today. Mid-way I spoke to Mat Hayman and he told me: ‘if you have good legs you have to race because you never know what will happen tomorrow’,” said a typically beaming Chaves.

“Neil Stephens told me about the climb and said it was really steep, at 10 per cent and even one part at 14 per cent. “Darryl [Impey] put me in a really good position and I started the climb in first position. I saw Amador suffering as he pushed the pace. When I saw that he wasn’t comfortable, I tried an went for it.

“I’m really happy, I want to thank all the team and staff again – they’re all amazing. Caleb Ewan won yesterday but today he went for bottles. This team is like a family.”

It was another blazing day in the Andalucían furnace and for a moment it looked like Steve Cummings (MTN-Qhubeka) might pull off a repeat of his Tour stage win in July. The Merseyside rider attacked from the day’s breakaway with 11 kilometres remaining and, after the peloton looked at each other, he was only passed by an attacking Chaves on a devilishly steep ramp just over 2km from the summit.

The victory is the third for Orica-GreenEdge team in the space of six stages, with Caleb Ewan sprinting to victory on stage 5. The Australian team has made a habit of asserting themselves during the first week of Grand Tours and their performance so far makes up for a disappointing Tour de France.

“We’ve had a great Tour so far. It’s much better start, that’s for sure. We had a really hard Tour de France, things didn’t go as well as planned. That’s cycling and sports in general, you have your ups and downs and this is fantastic,” said Impey.

How it unfolded

As the riders lined up in Córdoba they were without David De La Cruz (Eitxx-QuickStep), who did not take to the start due to his continued suffering from a broken collarbone sustained at the Tour de Pologne earlier this month. Once the flag had dropped he was soon joined by Matiej Mohoric (Cannondalte-Garmin), who called it a day after 30-odd kilometres and a couple of trips back to the medical car.

With a hot 200 kilometres on the menu, the riders would have been forgiven for letting this settle into a pattern early on but 60km went by without a breakaway being allowed to form. Numerous moves of various shapes and sizes were shut down before five riders were finally given the green light after about 70km.

Cummings, Peter Velits (BMC), Kristijan Durasek (Lampre-Merida), Niki Terpstra (Etixx), and Cyril Gautier (Europcar) moved away and were soon joined by Miguel Angel Rubiano (Colombia) to form a six-man break, which built a lead of four minutes across the undulating terrain.

When the leaders hit the first climb of the day, the third-category Alto de Baeza, their advantage began to diminish, with Movistar and Giant-Alpecin forcing the issue on the front of the bunch. At the top of the climb, and on the ensuing flat and then downhill roads, they were steadily reeled in until they had under a minute when the road started to rise again in the final 20km.

Shortly after the intermediate sprint at Peal de Becerro – where Rubiano took the points from Terpstra and Durasek – Cummings made his individual bid for freedom with 11km remaining and the gap less than half a minute.

Terpstra set off in pursuit while the other breakaway riders threw in the towel and the gap to the peloton started to go back out to nearly a minute. The peloton looked at each other but Cummings was slowly brought back nonetheless and his lead was slight going onto the final climb proper with 3km remaining.

Chaves then struck out for glory, passing Cummings on the steepest section of 15 per cent, and Dumoulin was forced to go after the Colombian himself, attacking when the road eased slightly under the 2km banner.

Dan Martin was the next to attack from the bunch, and was soon followed by Nicolas Roche, who dragged Alejandro Valverde with him. It soon became clear that Chaves had it in the bag as an advancing Martin closed in on a fading Dumoulin and passed him just shy of the line.

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