Britain’s Simon Yates claimed stage six of the Vuelta a Espana with a gutsy solo attack in the final 3.5km for his first Grand Tour stage win as Colombia’s Darwin Atapuma maintained the leader’s red jersey.
Yates made the decisive break in the closing stages of the 163.2km stage from Monforte de Lemos to take victory in a time of 4 hours, 5 minutes from Spain’s Luis Leon Sanchez and Italian Fabio Felline.
“We set it up pretty well in the beginning. I managed to take my opportunity in the finale, it wasn’t planned,” Yates said. “It was a pretty crazy day with a lot of twists and turns. I timed my attack to perfection.”
Yates seemed determined not to be overshadowed by his brother’s success as the best young rider at the Tour as he judged his attack perfectly on another hilly stage with three climbs in the final 50km.
Yates neutralized attacks from Mathias Frank and Dani Moreno in the final 10km before upping the pace to the finish line.
Behind him the general classification leaders stayed together in the peloton, finishing 29 seconds back.
Atapuma maintains a 28-second lead over Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, while Chris Froome is four seconds further back in third as he attempts to become the first man to win the Tour of France and Vuelta back-to-back for 38 years.
However, Astana, who won the race last year with Fabio Aru, lost their main candidate for the overall win when Miguel Angel Lopez retired three days after crashing and breaking teeth.
Earlier in the day, race director Javier Guillen met with leaders of the LottoNL-Jumbo team to apologize for the events that forced Steven Kruijswijk to withdraw from the race with a broken collarbone in Wednesday’s fifth stage due to an unprotected traffic bollard.
Addy Engels, director of the Dutch team, refused to rule out taking legal action for the incident that left them without their main contender for the overall win.
“The Tour of Spain has acted well and taken responsibility for their error. Their apologies do not fix, nor are they going to change what happened,” he said.
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