Stage 9

The road

At the start

La Covatilla, ten kilometres at 7.4%

Joaquim Rodriguez took El Escorial and the red jersey, and leads his own teammate Moreno by 32 seconds, Fuglsang by 34 and Nibali by 45. Today is more orthodox: lumpy country in the shadow of the Sierra de Ávila and then ten kilometres averaging 7.4 percent to the Covatilla, which the race has not climbed for five years. Tomorrow there are 47 kilometres against the clock.

How it was won

1. 1168 km to go

   Lang starts it

   Over the opening climb, Sebastian Lang instigates the move of the day and is joined by Toribio and the Vacansoleil pair Ligthart and Keizer. By eighty kilometres they have more than nine minutes.

2. 230 km to go

   Two Ls, thirty kilometres out

   Ligthart and Lang have shed the other two and hold 2:40 on them and six minutes on a Katusha-led bunch. Neither of them is a climber, and La Covatilla is coming.

3. 320 km to go

   The first real summit finish

   The bunch hits the climb in earnest with five minutes to close and twenty kilometres to do it in. It is not a question of whether, only of when, and of what the closing does to everyone behind.

4. 47 km to go

   The cousins go

   As the leaders are swallowed, Dan Martin and Nicolas Roche attack together and start swapping turns like family, seven kilometres of the hardest slopes still to come.

5. 52 km to go

   Froome hauls Wiggins up

   Chris Froome drags his captain across to the front of the race, and two kilometres from the line an elite selection with Van Den Broeck, Cobo and Mollema in it reaches the cousins. Behind, Rodriguez is losing forty seconds and the race lead.

6. 6At the line

   La Covatilla

   Wiggins is driving it at the front when Dan Martin opens the sprint with 250 metres left and kicks over the final crest for his first Grand Tour stage win. Mollema is second and Cobo third; tomorrow there are 47 kilometres against the clock.

The result