Stage 6

The road

At the start

One second, and a leg-breaker

A split in the finale at Alcalá de Guadaíra cost Esteban Chaves six seconds, and Tom Dumoulin has the red jersey by one. David de la Cruz does not start. Today is 202 kilometres of what the Spanish call rompepiernas — up and down all afternoon in the heat — and then the Alto de Cazorla: twenty kilometres of steady climbing, a sharp descent, and two kilometres straight up to the line.

How it was won

1. 155 km to go

   Sixty kilometres to make a break

   Nobody was allowed away for the first hour of a stage in an Andalusian furnace. When five are finally let go it is far too late: on the Alto de Baeza, Movistar and Giant-Alpecin start eating them alive.

2. 216 km to go

   Peal de Becerro

   Rubiano takes the sprint from Terpstra and Durasek. The break has less than half a minute left and the road is about to go up for the last time.

3. 311 km to go

   Cummings tries it again

   Eleven kilometres out, on a stage nobody expected him to win, Steve Cummings goes exactly as he went at Mende in July. Terpstra chases; the rest give up; the peloton looks at one another and lets the gap grow back towards a minute.

4. 42 km to go

   Fifteen per cent, and Chaves

   Cummings is caught going onto the final ramp of the Alto de Cazorla with three kilometres left, and on the steepest pitch — fifteen per cent — Esteban Chaves comes past him and simply keeps accelerating. Dumoulin has no choice but to go after him alone.

5. 5At the line

   Red comes back

   Chaves wins by five seconds, Dan Martin catching a fading Dumoulin just short of the line for second. The Colombian takes back the jersey he lost to a split the day before.

The result