Vincenzo Nibali creeps closer to overall lead as Italian team splits the pack on the final descent
Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) won the sixth stage of the Vuelta a España between Úbeda and Córdoba as the Liquigas-Cannondale team tore the peloton apart on the final descent with less than ten kilometres to go. Pressure from the Slovakian champions’s Liquigas-Cannondale teammate, defending champion Vincenzo Nibali, on the way down the Alto del Catorce pulled Eros Capecchi, Valerio Agnoli and Sagan clear inside the final seven kilometres; the green and blue team rode a team time trial all the way to the finish, where Sagan won the sprint.
Second place on the stage was stage three winner Pablo Lastras (Movistar), who was the one interloper into the big Liquigas-Cannondale attack, with Agnoli taking third. Nibali, surprisingly allowed to miss out on the bonus seconds, finished fourth, with the exhausted Capecchi trailing over three seconds behind.
In the closing kilometres the Liquigas-Cannondale riders managed to open up a 17-second gap over a ten-rider group, which included race leader Sylvain Chavanel (Quick Step) and most of the men at the top of the overall standings. It was led over the line by Jakob Fuglsang (Leopard Trek), with many of the overall contenders – including second and third placed Daniel Moreno and Joaquim Rodriguez (both Katusha) – coming in after 23 seconds.
Time gained on the line by Nibali lifts ‘the shark’ into third place overall and he now trails Chavanel by just 16 seconds.
“Vincenzo wanted to go and ride at the front”, explained Sagan. “So we did it as a team and we made it a group of four from Liquigas-Cannondale in the lead on the descent. We went flat out. We wanted to create a gap.
“We also wanted to make Nibali win because he would have collected the twenty second bonus,” he explained, “but Movistar rider [Pablo Lastras – ed] was there with us and he forced me to go for the win.”
The victory is Sagan’s twelfth of the season, which include stages at the Tours of Poland, Suisse and California – as well as the overall in Poland – but it is his first in a Grand Tour, as he makes his debut in a three-week race.
“My wins in Poland two weeks ago made me believe that I’d be able to find some success at the Vuelta as well”, he said. “I’ve made it today and I’m interested in finishing my first Grand Tour.
“I’m only focussing on arriving in Madrid,” he added, regarding a potential victory in Copenhagen after the Vuelta. “I don’t want to make any plan for the World Championships or for next year.”
The aggressive finale came at the end of a stage dominated by a long attack from Aleksejs Saramotins (Cofidis), Martin Kohler (BMC Racing), Yukihiro Doi (Skil-Shimano) and Adrian Palomares (Andalucia-Caja Rural). The four riders managed to build a lead of more than eight minutes by the middle part of the stage, but were caught inside the last 30km.
A late attack from David Moncoutié (Cofidis), Tony Martin (HTC-Highroad), David De la Fuente (Geox-TMC) and Kevin Seeldrayers (Quick Step) over the final climb was neutralised on the descent as the Liquigas-Cannondale team went on the attack.
A quiet looking stage that should create few problems...
The flattish profile of stage six looked for all the world like a classic transitional course, where a breakaway would be allowed to get away before the sprinters teams pulled it back towards the finish. The presence of the 2nd category Alto del Catorce por Ciento (literally, the fourteen percent climb – ed) a little over twenty kilometres from the finish offered the opportunity for late attacks though.
Certainly, race leader Sylvain Chavanel was expecting a relatively quiet day, after coming under so much pressure the day before. “Yesterday I was scared of the finish, today I’m not”, he said at the start. “Later in the Vuelta, I’ll look for being far down on GC, and then I’ll be able to go for the stage victory that I want so much.”
Sagan though, despite claiming to not be feeling so good, ominously had his eye on the Córdoba finish. “I keep at the back of my mind that a stage win is a possibility today,” he said.
The breakaway takes a while but when it goes it goes
The rolling and descending start saw a number of attempted escapes in the early kilometres, including one numbering twenty riders that included Chavanel himself, and one of eighteen that included Joaquim Rodriguez. Finally though, after 60km, the Saramotins, Kohler, Doi and Palomares group escaped, and was allowed to get away by the peloton.
Once the four riders had established a lead, it grew rapidly, and was up to 8’11” by the time they reached the feedzone after 99km. At this point though, the Leopard Trek and Garmin-Cervélo teams moved forward and began to close the gap. Despite the climb so close to the finish, many of the sprinters were confident of being able to make it there to contest the victory.
“I know the final hill because we did it two years ago,” Leopard Trek’s Daniele Bennati said at the start. “It’s not easy but it’s also not impossible for me to win. Our team Leopard-Trek won’t ride at the beginning of the stage but later on, it’s an option if we feel that I can win.
“I want to win, that’s for sure,” added the Italian.
As Saramotins led the break through the first intermediate sprint, at Villafranca de Córdoba with 54.6km to go, the gap had been reduced to 4’58”. With Quick Step, AG2R La Mondiale and Liquigas-Cannondale adding their muscle to the chase the move looked doomed.
The break resists until Cancellara turns the screw
Ten kilometres later though, the gap was still almost five minutes, until a huge turn on the front from World time trial champion Fabian Cancellara (Leopard Trek) took it down to just over two minutes in the space of five kilometres. The leaders were now beginning to tire visibly as they tackled a strong headwind.
After a rest for a few minutes on the wheel of teammate Davide Vigano, Cancellara came forward once again and cut the gap to a minute as the leaders were approaching the final kilometres.
With the peloton breathing down the necks of the four leaders, Kohler attacked his companions just before they were to cross the finish line to start the 31km finishing loop. As he took the intermediate sprint alone, he was a few seconds clear of the other three, but the peloton was less than a minute behind.
Doi and Saramotins were the first to be caught by the still-Cancellara-led peloton; Palomares was to join them shortly afterwards, and Kohler finally succumbed as the climb to the Alto del Catorce por ciento began.
As soon as the break is over another one gets away
Leopard Trek continued to control the peloton but, with just under two kilometres to go to the top, Moncoutié jumped clear. The Frenchman was quickly joined by Martin, De la Fuente and Seeldrayers; he took the mountain points over the top, and the four riders began to open up a gap on the rolling roads on the approach to the descent.
The group was only able to get a maximum lead of ten seconds though and, as the descent began, the Liquigas-Cannondale began to increase the pace. With ten kilometres to go the lead was just five seconds, and it was all over two kilometres later as Sagan and Nibali began to put their downhill skills to use.
The peloton began to split and, as the men in green and blue continued to pile on the pressure, they began to pull clear of the rest. Nibali, Sagan, Capecchi and Agnoli detached from the front of the bunch and only Lastras was able to go with them. The stage three winner refused to work with the Liquigas-Cannondale quartet at first, until it became clear that he may be in with a chance of taking his second victory in the race.
Liquigas-Cannondale rides a team time trial and outruns the rest
Behind the lead five was a group of ten, which included Chavanel, and the gap between the two was gradually beginning to widen as the team time trial of Nibali’s team proved to be better organised than the loose group of riders behind. Moreno and Rodriguez, who started the day in second and third respectively, were not present in the first chase group, but were stranded in a second group a few further seconds back.
Under the flamme rouge, with one kilometre to go, the Liquigas-Cannondale cohesion seemed to be cracking, as the powerful rouleurs were proving too strong for the climbers. They led Chavanel by 13 seconds at this point though, and managed to come back together for the final surge to the line.
With a maximum twenty bonus seconds on the line, the Liquigas-Cannondale team might have liked to have given Nibali the stage victory, which could have seen him in the red jersey if they could finish far enough in front of Chavanel. The presence of Lastras complicated things though, since the veteran Spanish rouleur packed a faster sprint than the Sicilian climber.
Sagan needed no second invitation to sprint though, and once the Slovakian champion had moved into top gear there was no way that Lastras – or anyone else – was going to challenge. The Movistar rider managed to take second though, ahead of Agnoli, who seemed deep in conversation with Nibali over who should take the third place.
Fuglsang, who had led the race following stage one, led the Chavanel group over, 17 seconds back, with Bennati – for whom Leopard Trek had done so much work in the chase – leading the larger Moreno/Rodriguez group in after 23.
Despite losing time to Nibali, who moves into third place overall, just sixteen seconds behind, Chavanel increases his lead a little over Moreno. The French champion now leads the stage four winner by 15 seconds, with what looks like a sprinters’ stage to come the following day.