Stage 5

The road

At the start

One second between first and second

Simon Clarke won at Valdezcaray and Joaquim Rodríguez took the red jersey — by one second from Chris Froome, five from Alberto Contador, with the Rabobank pair another four back. Alejandro Valverde crashed in the crosswinds and lost all of it while Sky rode on. Today is one of the very few days this Vuelta gives the sprinters: eight laps of a twenty-one-kilometre circuit at Logroño.

How it was won

1. 129 km to go

   Chacón's twelve minutes end

   He attacked inside the first kilometre and had nearly twelve minutes by forty. Then he starts stuffing ice into his jersey, misses a bottle in the feed zone, loses thirty seconds in two kilometres, and is caught with twenty-nine to go.

2. 2At the line

   Degenkolb closes it himself

   Bennati opens the sprint early on the eighth lap of the Logroño circuit and looks to have gone. Degenkolb, with nobody left to lead him out, shuts the gap down on his own and then comes around the Italian's left-hand side for his second stage in four days.

The result