Stage 8

The road

At the start

Across the plains to Albacete

The only stage of this Vuelta longer than 200 kilometres, and the only one without a single categorised climb: 207 kilometres across open plain to Albacete, where the wind decides what happens. Alejandro Valverde holds red by fifteen seconds from Nairo Quintana, with Contador at eighteen and Froome at twenty. On roads like these a Vuelta can be lost by one bike length.

How it was won

1. 140 km to go

   Into the wind zone

   The bunch lifts the pace approaching the exposed roads and Favilli and Aramendia's day is over with 40km left. Everyone knows what is coming.

2. 225 km to go

   Cancellara and Boonen do what they do

   Two Classics men accelerate into the crosswind and cut the field to barely a quarter of its size, leaving the sprinters' teams stripped of helpers.

3. 310 km to go

   The split that nearly cost Quintana

   With 10km left the front group of sixty is torn in half by Tinkoff, Omega Pharma and BMC — Quintana, Aru, Dan Martin, Degenkolb and Barguil all on the wrong side of it. Giant chase it back by 5km, and Degenkolb burns his sprint doing it.

4. 4At the line

   Bouhanni by a wheel

   Omega Pharma lead into the 800-metre straight for Boonen, and Bouhanni — a man who nearly abandoned with sunstroke yesterday — goes at 300 metres and holds off Matthews by the width of a tyre.

The result