Yesterdays 160 kilometres long stage from Valladolid
to Villa Del Libro De Urueñam was mainy flat and as expected the main players for the overall win waited for todays queen
stage..
After two kilomtres Jose Lopez (Andalucia –
Cajasur) and Oleg Chuzhda (Contentpolis - Murcia) escaped. After one more kilomtre David Martin (Orbea - Oreka S.D.A) joined
them. The breakaway group had an advantage of several minutes but with 26 kilometres to go they had only 1 minute and 40 seconds
left.
The three riders were caught up with ten kilometers
from the finish line. After that the sprinter's teams, helped by the strong headwind, kept everything tightly together. The
wind had had some influence on the pack during the race as well, which had made the pack quite nervous. That did not have
any consequences, however.
In the mass sprint Francisco Ventoso (Andalucia
– Cajasur) outsprinted the rest of the pack and took the flowers. Alberto Contador (Astana) defended his overall lead.
CSC did not have a good day. „First we had
to say goodbye to Haedo, who still had quite bad pains in his wrist after crashing during training on Friday. There are no
broken bones, but he's lost a lot of skin and the pain was too much and it didn't make sense for him to keep going. Jason
McCartney abandoned with stomach problems and Inigo Cuesta crashed and also had to abandon halfway through the stage. Definitely
not the best follow-up on yesterday's victory, but that's the way it goes sometimes and luckily we still have a great victory
to look back on,“ said CSC sports director Dan Frost on team-csc.com.
Rabobank was looking forward to todays
queen stage althoughits uncertain that tomorrows stage can be held as planned. "We are now especially looking forward to Thursday's
Queen's stage," Rabobank's sports director Adri Van Houwelingen told rabobank.nl. That stage is scheduled to finish at an
altitude of 1400 meters. At the moment it is uncertain whether that will actually happen, however. The weather in northern
Spain is cold and bad. The snow line has lowered to 1200 meters, which means that the place of arrival is covered with a thick
layer of snow. That is why the arrival might be moved down a bit. Van Houwelingen: "We are hoping that it will go on as planned,
because it will be a good test, even though the concluding climb is not that hard."
