Stage 20

The road

At the start

The Angliru

Horner attacked in sight of the line on the Naranco and turned three seconds down into three seconds up. He leads Nibali by that and Valverde by 1:06. Today is the last mountain of this Vuelta and the worst one Spain owns: the Cordal, and then the Angliru. The last rider to climb it in the red jersey was Bradley Wiggins in 2011, and he lost 1:21 and the race on it.

How it was won

1. 121 km to go

   Tiralongo and Elissonde over the Cordal

   The break comes together again at the foot of the Cordal and then Paolo Tiralongo fires clear of it; a couple of kilometres higher, twenty-two-year-old Kenny Elissonde puts in an enormous effort to join him. They cross the summit with 5:28, and the red jersey group behind them is already much smaller than it was.

2. 210 km to go

   Katusha light the Angliru

   Ten kilometres of the most notorious mountain in Spain to go, and Daniel Moreno goes to the front to set a fierce pace for Rodríguez. It shakes riders out of the group in ones and twos — including both of Chris Horner's last two teammates.

3. 37 km to go

   Nibali's first attack

   Seven kilometres from the summit the Italian goes. Nicolas Roche cannot hold the pace; Horner leads the chase himself and takes five hundred metres of hard climbing to get back on. Up the road Tiralongo sits up to wait for his leader, leaving Elissonde alone with two minutes.

4. 45 km to go

   The second attack

   Fuglsang has eased back too, so Nibali has two men to pace him — and within a few hundred metres he has dropped both of them and everyone else with his second acceleration. Horner answers it again.

5. 53 km to go

   Three kilometres, mist and crowds

   Nibali goes a third time where the fog is thickest and the spectators are on the road, and this time Rodríguez and Valverde cannot follow at all. What is left is a head-to-head between the top two riders in the Vuelta. He attacks a fourth time. Horner comes back a fourth time.

6. 62 km to go

   The hairpin at two kilometres

   Four times Nibali has dropped him and four times he has clawed it back, and now, on a vicious hairpin just inside the two-kilometre banner, the forty-one-year-old presses instead of following. Nibali cannot answer. Horner does not look round; he simply keeps pushing, and the gap grows all the way to the top of the Angliru.

7. 7At the line

   Out of the gloom, two winners

   Elissonde emerges from the mist first and hangs on for an unbelievable victory, FDJ's second summit finish of this race. Then Horner appears, picking off the remains of the break, and raises an arm before sinking to the road when they help him off the bike. The bonus for second takes his lead to thirty-seven seconds; Valverde catches Nibali on the last ramps and secures third overall.

The result