A day after his lead had shrunk to a single second, Spain’s Joaquim Rodriguez once again increased his overall advantage with a lone stage win on the Vuelta a Espana’s fifth summit finish on Thursday.
Rodriguez shed Alberto Contador 150m from the summit of the short, but agonizingly steep climb of Mirador de Ezaro to claim an eight-second victory over his compatriot.
Spain’s Alejandro Valverde finished third, 13 seconds behind Rodriguez.
Photo: Reuters
After claiming a 12 second time bonus for his victory, Rodriguez now leads by 13 seconds over Contador, who picked up an eight bonus seconds, while Britain’s Chris Froome — third overall, but fifth on the stage — dropped to 51 seconds off the pace.
“I’d had this stage marked down with a cross in my route book and I could do what I planned,” Rodriguez, already victorious on the Fuerte del Rapitan uphill finish in the first week, told reporters. “This was way harder a climb than I expected, though, so I had to calculate my strength really carefully. I’ve no idea how far I can go as leader after this win today, but if I can take it all the way to Madrid, that would be perfect.”
“However, Contador was much harder to beat than I’d expected today and there are four of us still in the mix,” he said, referring to himself, Contador, Valverde and Froome. “You can’t rule anybody out.”
Photo: Reuters
After an early move on the Mirador de Ezaro’s relentlessly steep slopes of up to 29 percent by Spain’s Igor Anton fizzled out, Contador managed to go clear, but Rodriguez constantly shadowed the double Tour de France winner as they went under the banner indicating a kilometer to the summit and then bolted forward for the win on the 190.5km stage.
“It was such a short climb you can’t draw too many conclusions,” Contador told reporters. “Either way, my objectives are still further ahead in this race.”
After a short, undulating trek from Santiago de Compostela to Ferrol on stage 13, the riders face three days of high mountain stages in the northern region of Asturias.
“Up to now it’s been just one big climb and that’s been it, but from Saturday it will be a whole different ball game,” Rodriguez said. “We’re all four equally balanced for now, but by the time we reach the rest day next week at least one of us will have disappeared from the running.”
La Vuelta finishes on Sept. 9 in Madrid.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier