Stage 14

The road

At the start

Andorra, in the rain

Nibali leads Roche by thirty-one seconds and Valverde and Horner by forty-six. Today the Vuelta climbs into Andorra over the Port de Envalira — hors catégorie, 2,410 metres, the roof of this race — and then three more climbs to a summit finish on the Collada de la Gallina. It is raining, and it is going to be about five degrees at the top of the Envalira.

How it was won

1. 169 km to go

   The roof of the race, at five degrees

   The Port de Envalira is twenty-seven kilometres long, tops out at 2,410 metres, and shows fifteen per cent halfway up. It is raining and it is 5.5°C. Katusha drive it and decimate the field to about forty riders; Gilbert takes the twenty points at the summit.

2. 257 km to go

   Twenty kilometres down, in the wet

   The descent does the damage the climb did not. Luis León Sánchez crashes and abandons. Ratto takes the lead of the race on the road from Gilbert, and behind them Ivan Basso is the first of the favourites to be in trouble.

3. 339 km to go

   Nine try, nine fail

   A group of nine — Herrada, Arroyo, Txurruka, Antón, Martínez, Urtasun, Pinot, Howes and Flecha — attacks out of the shrunken peloton and cannot make it stick. The gap to the front is still eight minutes and seventeen seconds.

4. 416 km to go

   Ratto alone, Basso gone

   Daniele Ratto crosses the Comella by himself and even he has to put a foot down on one wet hairpin on the way off it. Behind him Ivan Basso's abandon is confirmed — close to hypothermia, seventh overall this morning — and Alejandro Valverde is forty seconds adrift and losing.

5. 54 km to go

   Three men in the last four kilometres

   The group of favourites, already down to about twenty, falls apart on the Collada de la Gallina. Nicolas Roche, second overall this morning, cracks and will lose seven minutes. Horner, Kiserlovski and Nibali go clear; Kiserlovski is soon dropped; and the American does the work while the Sicilian rides alongside him now and then, just to make the point.

6. 6At the line

   Ratto's day

   The Cannondale rider, a hundred and thirteenth overall and nearly an hour and a half down, solos in for the biggest win of his life. Nibali takes second at 3:53 with Horner two seconds behind him, and the red jersey is untouched.

The result