Stage 17

The road

At the start

Peña Cabarga, thirteen percent

Froome took a couple of seconds back at a sprint in Haro and is 22 down, with Wiggins at 51 and Mollema at 1:41. Today looks harmless on paper — 211 kilometres over two modest climbs — until the finish, where the last 1.5 kilometres up Peña Cabarga average thirteen percent and touch nineteen. Igor Anton crashed out of the 2010 Vuelta in the red jersey on this climb.

How it was won

1. 194 km to go

   A twenty-man break, finally

   It takes 116 kilometres of a 211-kilometre day for anything to be allowed to go, and when it does it is twenty riders deep — Chavanel, Van Avermaet, Kaisen, Petrov, Fröhlinger among them.

2. 248 km to go

   The Lunada

   Kaisen attacks the break on the second climb and his own companions bring him back, and then Bruseghin, Frank and the mountains leader Moncoutié come across from behind to make the front of the race genuinely dangerous.

3. 35 km to go

   Dan Martin lights Peña Cabarga

   Five kilometres out, on a climb that never lets up, the stage-nine winner jumps and Txurruka, Sørensen and Bruseghin go after him. Eight seconds becomes nothing when Bruseghin gets across and lifts it further.

4. 43 km to go

   Van Den Broeck goes past everybody

   The leaders hold fourteen seconds at three kilometres with Sørensen somewhere in the middle of it, and then Jurgen Van Den Broeck pins his ears back and takes five hundred metres to catch and pass all three of them.

5. 51 km to go

   Thirteen percent, and nineteen

   The last 1.5 kilometres average thirteen percent and touch nineteen, and they break Van Den Broeck too — he is caught before the flamme rouge with Nieve, Cobo, Wiggins and Froome. He attacks again anyway, and this time Wiggins is the one in trouble.

6. 6At the line

   Peña Cabarga

   Froome goes with the Belgian and then counters, face wrecked, riding for the red jersey rather than the stage. He wins the day and Cobo, refusing to be anywhere but on his wheel, finishes second and keeps the Vuelta by thirteen seconds.

The result