Piepoli edges hard-driving Heras as Landis clings to Vuelta's golden jersey
Well, they said the Vuelta a España would open up when it hit the hills.
It was, after all, in the script. Sunday’s 162km ride from Xátiva to the beyond-category mountaintop finish at Alto de Aitana was put there for a reason, and, simply put, that reason was to shake up the general classification in a way that no stage in this race has thus far managed to do. And it should come as no surprise that it was defending champion Roberto Heras (Liberty Seguros) who did much of the shaking.
While he may have finished four seconds in arrears of the day’s winner, Leonardo Piepoli (Saunier Duval), Heras emerged as the real victor on a stage that saw him ride a host of pre-race favorites off his wheel, beating his former U.S. Postal Service teammate and current race leader, Floyd Landis, by nearly a minute and moving himself up the overall standings from 14th (at 2:26) to sixth (at 1:35).
While Landis and teammate Manuel “Triki” Beltran continue to hold the Vuelta’s top two spots, the margin has changed, and the Posties' most immediate threat – Phonak’s Tyler Hamilton, who started the day in third at just 32 seconds – ended his day nearly 11 minutes off the winning pace.
Left struggling over the course of the day’s final 13.3km climb were such notables as Giro d’Italia winner Damiano Cunego (Saeco), former Giro winner Stefano Garzelli, T-Mobile’s Cadel Evans and Piepoli’s teammate, Joseba Beloki.
“I knew that I stood no chance for the overall here,” said Piepoli. “I was here to ride for a stage win and to support my leader, Joseba Beloki.” It’s a supporting role the Spain-based Italian is probably not going to have to fill in coming days.
Big threats come in small packages
Heras’s move came as a surprise to few. The two-time Vuelta winner has stayed quiet most of the week while his former U.S. Postal teammates played hot potato with the leader’s jersey. Landis slipped into the maillot de oro after the opening team time trial on September 4, and the jersey stayed with the team – albeit on a series of different shoulders – until it eventually wound up back with Landis, who regained it after finishing third in Saturday’s individual time trial.
The star of that stage, of course, was Hamilton, who defended the time-trialing reputation he enhanced with an Olympic gold medal in Athens by storming the 40.1km course in 47:16. Impressive enough, but a more noteworthy performance in the long term may have been Heras’s 15th place at 1:37.
“A more than acceptable margin,” Heras said Sunday morning, with an eye cocked toward the mountains.
Landis, too, saw the climbing specialist's performance on a flat 40km TT as significant.
"Heras won the race in 2000 and 2003, and he showed he was strong today," Landis noted on Saturday.
Come Sunday, Heras showed that strength again on his usual turf – the hills.
The day began with the usual series of early attacks, many by low-GC contenders hoping to steal glory or at least get a break on a short, 162km stage peppered with a series of six Category 2 and 3 climbs before the final haul to Alto de Aitana. All of those attempts were pulled back as the peloton maintained a randy 42.6kph for the first hour.
A bit later — at 50km, to be precise — a 14-man break slipped off and built a three-minute lead before coming apart on the slopes of the Cat. 2 ascent of Alto de Tollos at 63.3km
From this group emerged three riders - Félix Cardenas (Cafes Baque), Pablo Lastras (Illes Balears) and Tadej Valjavec (Phonak) — as a trio capable of pulling off a stage win. The three took a lead of nearly two minutes over their former breakaway companions as they negotiated the Cat. 2 Puerto de Tudons (92km) and the Cat. 2 Alto de Torremanzanas.
Five minutes behind, the peloton, too, was coming apart at the seams. On the Torremanzanas, Beloki – still on the long path to recovery from that horrendous crash in the 2003 Tour – faded back. Remarkably, a few kilometers later, just as the climb hit its steepest stretch at 12 percent, Hamilton, too, began to falter.
Immediately, his teammate Oscar Sevilla, who began the day in 24th at 4:13, sat up and waited for his team leader. Sevilla helped pace the American over the summit, just 40 seconds behind the peloton, and looked hopeful as he encouraged his teammate on the descent.
But on the approach to the day’s penultimate ascent, the Cat. 3 Puerto Benifallim, Hamilton slowed again, this time waving his teammate ahead. The man who finished on top of the podium on Saturday would cross the line Sunday 10:52 behind the day’s eventual winner.
At the front of the race, Phonak director Alvaro Pino pulled Valjavec from the break, ordering him to fall back to help Sevilla and other members of the squad regroup after Hamilton’s disappearance.
Meanwhile, the peloton began to sweep up errant members of the original break of 14. As they did, one rider, Kelme’s David Blanco, scampered off the front in pursuit of the three leaders.
With Postal assuming chase duties, the gap to the leaders narrowed. The men up front weren’t much of a GC threat, but Heras’s Liberty Seguros team moved to the front to step the pace up another notch. Up ahead, Blanco caught and passed more and more of the original group of 14.
By the base of the final climb, Cardenas and Lastras began the final 13.3km with an advantage of 2:58 on Blanco and 4:40 on the peloton.
By the time the serious climbing began, the front of the main field was all Liberty. With Heras’s chief rival from the 2003 Vuelta, Isidro Nozal, now a teammate, Liberty Seguros had full control of the group. Over the course of the next 5km the main group shriveled to 30, then to 25, and to 20, as rider after rider popped off the back.
With Nozal taking huge pulls, Postal began to lose its firepower, and eventually Landis found himself isolated in the lead group. With 5km to go, the Nozal-led group of elites had the two escapees within its sights.
Then Landis slipped off the pace.
Heras and Nozal accelerated, with only Piepoli and Jorge Ferrio Luque (Paternina) able to hold the tempo. As Cardenas and Lastras were finally caught, Nozal eased off and Heras stood on his pedals.
But Piepoli kept his wheel. And that is precisely where he stayed as Heras drove through the final kilometers of the foggy, crowd-lined climb.
“Going into the last kilometer, Heras looked at me as if to say, ‘Help me out, here,’” Piepoli said. “But I already know that I am here in the hunt for a stage win. Helping him add to the overall isn’t going to do me any good. I am here to win a stage, so I shook my head.”
Heras tested the mettle of his opponent one last time, but Piepoli hung tough and then made his own attack. It stuck, and the Italian had ample time to look over his shoulder, zip up his jersey, wave his arms a few times and then really celebrate as he crossed four seconds ahead of Heras and 10 ahead of Nozal
Behind followed a string of men who still have a realistic chance of denying Heras his third Vuelta title: Francisco Mancebo (Illes Balears-Banesto), now third overall at 38 seconds; Alejandro Valverde (Kelme), now fifth at 57 seconds; Landis, who remains in the lead; Beltran, in second at 0:33; Denis Menchov (Illes Balears-Banesto), now seventh at 1:52; and Carlos Sastre (CSC), eighth at 1:55.
To be certain, Heras himself still sits only sixth at 1:35. But after Sunday’s performance and two more days of climbing before Wednesday’s rest day, the man from Liberty has to be considered an odds-on favorite.
To see how the stage developed, click our Live Update Window.
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