Stage 6

The road

At the start

The road to an observatory

Remco Evenepoel leads Enric Mas by eleven seconds, Jonas Vingegaard by 37 and Primož Roglič by 43. Today is the hardest day so far — 182 kilometres and nearly 4,000 metres of climbing through the sierras of Valencia and Teruel to the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre, 10.8 kilometres of category one up a road that exists for one reason: to reach the building at the top.

How it was won

1. 1105 km to go

   A monster breakaway

   A huge 35-rider group escapes with Kuss, Martinez, Soler and Carthy aboard, over four minutes clear — Lenny Martinez the virtual race leader.

2. 24 km to go

   Javalambre bites

   On the brutal 13-16% ramps of the final climb Rubio attacks; Bardet and Martinez counter, trying to grab his wheel.

3. 33 km to go

   Kuss flies clear

   Sepp Kuss strikes from behind with 3.3km to go and finds nothing but daylight, soaring toward the observatory at the summit.

4. 4At the line

   Observatorio de Javalambre

   Kuss wins alone; Martinez kicks for second and the red jersey, and the whole GC is thrown into chaos.

The result