The mighty climb up La Camperona saw the young Oscar Rodriguez (Euskadi-Murias) ride to a spectacular win, on Friday. The 23 year-old Spaniard made the most of slopes up to 19.5% to dominate renowned riders such as Rafal Majka (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Dylan Teuns (BMC Racing Team) after spending the whole stage 13 at the front of the race. This is the first victory for a Basque team since Euskatltel-Euskadi left the professional pelotons in 2013. Nairo Quintana (Movistar) was the strongest of the GC contenders in the final climb, ahead of Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott). Jesus Herrada (Cofidis) stays in red but he lost almost two minutes to Quintana.
With the race heading in the mountains, attackers felt it was another day for them to try and win the stage. The battle was hard from the beginning and no less than 32 riders broke away after 15km of aggressive racing: Gorka Izaguirre (Bahrain-Merida), Ben Gastauer (AG2R-La Mondiale), Joseph Rosskopf, Dylan Teuns (BMC Racing Team), Marcus Burghardt, Rafal Majka, Jay Mc Carthy (Bora-Hansgrohe), Sander Armee, Thomas De Gendt, Bjorg Lambrecht, Maxime Monfort, Tosh Van Der Sande (Lotto Soudal), Imanol Erviti (Movistar), Laurens De Plus, Pieter Serry (Quick-Step Floors), Ben King, Merhawi Kudus (Dimension Data), Ilnur Zakarin, Jhonatan Restrepo (Katusha Alpecin), Sergio Henao (Team Sky), Jai Hindley (Team Sunweb), Bauke Mollema, Nicola Conci, Fabio Felline (Trek-Segafredo), Edward Ravasi (UAE Team Emirates), Jetse Bol (Burgos-BH), Alex Aranburu, Cristian Rodriguez (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Luis Angel Mate (Cofidis), Eduard Prades, Garikoitz Bravo and Oscar Rodriguez (Euskadi-Murias).
The red jersey Jesus Herrada (Cofidis) even went on the move before dropping back to the bunch where his team set a moderate pace. The gap rose to 9’30’’ 75km into the stage. Ben King (Dimension Data) was the virtual leader of the race as he was trailing by 7’04’’ on GC before the stage. Movistar, Mitchelton-Scott, LottoNL-Jumbo and Education First-Drapac) sent a man at the front to bring the gap down around 8 minutes at the bottom of the cat-1 Puerto de Tarna (13km, 5.8%). Astana also pulled in the climb and the gap was down to 6’22’’ at the summit, with 70km to go.
Quintana attacks, Lopez suffers a mechanical
The battle between the pack and the attackers kept going in the valley leading to the final climb. The gap was at 3’45’’ at the bottom of the final climb up La Camperona (8.3km, 7.5%). Rafal Majka and Dylan Teuns enjoyed the steepest parts of the climb (19.5%) to get away from their companions. But Oscar Rodriguez joined them and soloed away in the final kilometre.
Among the favorites, Nairo Quintana (Movistar) accelerated in the final 2 kilometres, as he did two years ago. Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) went with him while Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) was suffering a mechanical. A final dig from Quintana allowed him to gain 6’’ on Yates, 18’’ on Lopez, Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) and 1’46’’ on Jesus Herrada, who was dropped earlier.
