Cycling: Clear thing today at the 13th stage of the Vuelta a Espana. The 177km stage between Calatayud and Tarazona is one of the few on this year's Tour route with a profile that suits a breakaway. So it was not surprising that Nelson Oliveira (Lampre-Merida) was won by a driver who had made it into the breakaway group from the start.
The fights for position at the front of the field began today with the starting signal for the 13th stage of this year's Tour of Spain. Of course it was clear to the drivers and the teams that a strong breakaway group would fight for victory today. So it's not surprising that the first few kilometers were very confusing, one attack followed the next, but most of them fizzled out. A group of more than 50 riders rode at the front for a few kilometers, but broke up again after a few minutes.
It took almost 40km until things calmed down and the field slowly got a structure. A breakaway group of 24 drivers had formed at the front, including Nicolas Roche (Sky), Joaquin Rojas (Movistar), Romain Sicard (Europcar), Pawel Poljanski (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Sylvain Chavanel (IAM). . The group's lead leveled off at just under five minutes - the willingness of the field to close the gap was rather low. The top ranked breakaway was Sicard, over 6 minutes behind Fabio Aru.
So the stage rippled along a bit, also because the breakaways harmonized very well most of the time and worked well together. Only before the sprint and mountain classifications of the day did there always be a bit of unrest and one or the other attack - but the group usually got back together quickly afterwards. At the last mountain classification of the day, the Alto del Moncayo, however, the harmony was over - even the riders in the leading group knew that there was only a 20km long descent and a few flat kilometers to the finish line. So whoever could pull away here would have a good chance of winning.
Pawel Poljanski was the first to open up a small gap. The Pole reached the mountain classification a little more than 20 seconds ahead of his pursuers, but a chasing group then came together that caught up with the Tinkoff pro and was able to close the gap. After that, it wasn't a minute before Nelson Oliveira stepped up and pulled away. During the descent, the Portuguese time trial champion really threw everything into the balance and risked a lot - and it was worth it. The lead grew meter by meter, at the end of the descent it was almost 40 seconds.
Meanwhile, something was stirring in the peloton, as the breakaway group with Sicard was now almost six minutes away and the Frenchman became a serious threat in the overall standings. So Tinkoff-Saxo and Astana took charge and pushed the pace. At the front, Oliveira had now pulled away by more than 5 seconds with just under 50 km to go. Again and again his sports director drove alongside him in the support vehicle and loudly cheered on his driver. Finally, the Lampre-Merida professional crossed the finish line exactly one minute ahead of his pursuers. Julien Simon won the sprint in the chasing group ahead of Nicolas Roche. The main field followed 4:45 behind - Romain Sicard climbed to 10th place in the overall standings. Nairo Quintana (Movistar)
Final result stage 13 Vuelta a Espana 2015
[easy table th=“0″]1.,Nelson Oliveira,Lampre-Merida,04:14:01
2., Julien Simon, Cofidis, 00:01:00
3.,Nicolas Roche,Sky,
4.,Sylvain Chavanel,IAM,
5.,Joaquin Rojas,Movistar,
6.,Rinaldo Nocentini,AG2R,
7., Kevin Reza, FDJ,
8.,Mikael Cherel,AG2R,
9th,Cameron Meyer,Orica GreenEdge,
10. Maxime Monfort Lotto Soudal
[/easy table]
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