Three-time Tour de France victor Froome ramped up the pressure on Quintana by claiming an emphatic time-trial victory on Friday to reduce the Colombian’s lead to a minute and 21 seconds.
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Two stages of the three-week tour remain, but with today’s finale a mere procession around the streets of central Madrid, yesterday’s 193.2km ride from Benidorm to Alto de Aitana was key.
Frenchman Pierre Latour (AG2R-La Mondiale) won the stage from a breakaway inspired by Esteban Chaves (Orica-BikeExchange), who succeeded in wresting overall third place from home favourite Alberto Contador and denying the Tinkoff team a podium place in their final Grand Tour.
Froome clapped as Quintana pulled past him following the last of several one-on-one climbing duels by the stars on the three-week Grand Tour. “Quintana still has more than 1 minute of advantage, but we will keep fighting all the way”.
Spain’s Jonathan Castroviejo finished 44 seconds behind Froome and Tobias Ludvigsson of Sweden was third.
“I’m super-happy. It was my big goal when I came here; I really wanted to win a stage”, Frank told reporters.
“We’ll see [what happens] tomorrow and I’ll speak with my team-mates tonight”.
“Nairo has a good team around him”.
Out of the overall contenders, Froome is the best time trial cyclist. “That’s expected, and we were very attentive”, Quintana said.
But Froome soon managed to rejoin his main challengers and the four top riders in the standings crossed the line together, three minutes and 27 seconds behind stage victor Matthias Frank.
While Froome still has a chance to win the Vuelta, Contador, who is now 3min 43sec behind Quintana, only has a slim hope to win a fourth title.
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Magnus Cort Nielsen might be the only Dane racing in this year’s Vuelta de Espana, but he was the one grabbing all the headlines yesterday following his mesmerising win in the 18th stage.
