Belgian cyclist Wouter Weylandt won the 17th stage of the Spanish Vuelta on Wednesday and Alberto Contador maintained his overall lead.
Second behind the 23-year-old Belgian in the hard-fought bunch sprint was Dane Matti Breschel. Alexandre Usov of Belarus was third.
After 17 stages, Quick Step have won three more stages than any other squad in the race, with Belgian Tom Boonen and Italian world champion Paolo Bettini taking two apiece for the team.
PHOTO: AFP
“Normally I’m Tom’s lead-out man in the sprint here in Spain but today with 20km left to race he said I would have my chance,” Weylandt told reporters after the 148km stage from Zamora.
“I had a bad crash four days ago on a descent, hurting both my knees, but I’ve slowly recovered and today I finally felt at 100 percent again,” he said.
“Bettini and [Italian team mate Matteo] Tosatto did a lot of work for me in the last kilometers and I could just win the sprint,” Weylandt said.
“Winning a stage in my first major Tour and after such an awful early part of the year, full of crashes and minor injuries, is a very special feeling,” he said.
Overall, Contador remained in control of the race for a fifth successive stage.
His Astana team-mate Levi Leipheimer is second, one minute 17 seconds behind, and Carlos Sastre is third at 3:41.
“Today was a day for the sprinters, one for the rest of us to get through,” Contador told Spanish television TVE. “The most important thing was to get through unscathed.”
Contador said his last big target before Sunday’s finish in Madrid would be tomorrow’s 17.1km mountain time trial, where he hopes to seal his overall victory.
“Me and Levi will both race the time trial flat out, with no team orders. I’m looking forward to that stage very much,” he said.
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