Well what to make of yesterdays stage. The sort of raid you see happen on a fairly regular basis on the Vuelta, especially on those short stages that start with an uphill effort, with Sky properly caught out. Brambilla forced the break and Contador saw his opportunity and the peloton was blown appart. Quintana just about made it across with a couple of team mates, and from then on the stage was set. The gap seemed to hover around the 2 min mark with Sky and OBE quickly burning up the few domestiques they’d managed to get into the chase group, and Valverde doing a great job of getting in the way and frustrating their efforts.

Brambilla was the only one able to stick with Quintana on the final climb and got well deserved stage win for the days efforts. The big news though was the GC shake up with Quintana the big winner, now with a huge three and a half minutes on Froome in second place. Race over? Who knows with the Vuelta!

Today’s stage to Peñíscola (no sniggering at the back!) should see a little less action…

Difficult to see past Meersman adding to his tally if it comes to the likely sprint.

66km of this off the top?

That was brilliant stuff yesterday! One of the rare times Sky dropped the ball. I thought Dave Brailsford and Chris Froome were quite honest, held their hands up and admitted Movistar and Tinkoff had played a blinder.

More of the same please, but with Froome on the right side of the time gaps 😉

Yes Kryton, hopefully not like this chap… 🙂

http://road.cc/content/news/203441-video-cyclist’s-froome-tuck-goes-badly-wrong

I liked inrng‘s comment this week…

Either way Quintana put 2m33s into Froome and now has the kind of lead that means he could stop for an ice cream during the time trial and still relax.

Wednesday’s will be an interesting stage. After a rest day, a tough climb near the start, and with a finish on top of a cat 1 climb. Froome will have to try and put some time into Quintana here.

Interesting discussion on Eurosport prompted by a comment from Contador about the number of riders who missed the time cut yesterday but were allowed to stay in the race (about half the riders in the race.) Contador commenting on how much of an easy ride those riders had yesterday, basically having a rest day. And now the riders who rode hard to finish within the time gap are competing against those that didn’t. Most that didn’t are now at the front of the peloton driving the pace for the sprinters teams.

Interesting that a lot of riders seem to be of the view that they should have been eliminated to send a message that you can’t just sit back in the gruppetto.