Stage 14

The road

At the start

Into the Cantabrian mountains

Igor Antón has held red for three days and begins the first of three days in the Cantabrian mountains 45 seconds up on Nibali and 1:17 on Rodríguez. The route is rugged from the Alto de Bocos onward and then, after fifty easier kilometres, turns up Peña Cabarga: three abrupt kilometres, a brief respite, two more to the top. Antón was kept out of the Tour for this race, and this is the climb his team had circled.

How it was won

1. 1147 km to go

   Terpstra, then two Americans

   Niki Terpstra slips clear of a seven-man break after 35 kilometres and builds 3:30 in a quarter of an hour. David Millar and David Zabriskie decide that is worth chasing, bridge across, and the three of them settle in.

2. 271 km to go

   Twelve fifty-five on the Lunada

   Over the Portillo de Lunada the three leaders have their maximum, 12:55, and Caisse d'Epargne — with no leader left to protect — start pulling it back for reasons entirely of their own.

3. 352 km to go

   Guerrilla warfare on the Caracol

   Caisse d'Epargne set an infernal tempo up the Alto del Caracol and then send David Arroyo, and then Luis León Sánchez, up the road to make Euskaltel work. It is inventive, it is doomed on the flat roads that follow, and it dooms the break as well.

4. 47 km to go

   Antón goes down

   Six and a half kilometres out, with the bunch closing on the foot of Peña Cabarga at better than sixty-five an hour, the leader of the Vuelta hits the deck. Wheels touched, or a pothole; either way Igor Antón and Egoi Martínez are left spread-eagled on the tarmac, and the man who has led this race is not getting up to finish it.

5. 52 km to go

   Nibali goes for the jersey

   On the last steep pitches, in a group down to ten, Nibali rips past David García and opens a gap. For a moment he looks like the winner of the whole race, riding away to a red jersey nobody will take off him.

6. 61 km to go

   Rodríguez answers, and counters

   The Catalan drags himself back to the Italian just before the red kite — and then attacks him, viciously, eight hundred metres from the line. Nibali has nothing left to give.

7. 7At the line

   Rodríguez wins, Nibali inherits red

   Rodríguez takes the stage at the top of Peña Cabarga with Nibali behind him. The Italian's losses are small enough that Antón's vacated jersey passes to him — by four seconds.

The result