Stage 12

The road

At the start

Froome goes home, Aru in red

Chris Froome does not start: he went down inside the first quarter of an hour in Andorra and his Vuelta ends there. Fabio Aru took red off Tom Dumoulin on Els Cortals d'Encamp and leads Joaquim Rodríguez by 27 seconds and the Dutchman by 30. Today comes out of the mountains to Lleida, 173 kilometres with the only climb done early, and possibly the last bunch sprint before Madrid.

How it was won

1. 130 km to go

   Five specialists, working perfectly

   Bouet, Rubiano, Venter, Lindeman and Gougeard have three minutes and none of them is a threat to red, so Astana simply refuse to chase. With thirty kilometres left it is still the sprinters' teams doing all the work, and losing.

2. 2At the line

   Van Poppel down the middle

   Venter has a gap inside the final kilometre and Bouet gets across to him; the sprinters catch them on the rising road to the line. Impey opens early, and Danny van Poppel — who punctured with ten kilometres to go — comes straight down the middle in the last twenty metres.

The result