Vuelta Stage 13: Britain's Steve Cummings time trials to solo stage win, Joaquin Rodriguez keeps overall lead

Britain's Steve Cummings of BMC Racing this afternoon pulled off the biggest win of his career to take Stage 13 of the Vuelta in Ferro, the fomer team pursuit world champion attacking from a small breakaway group 3 kilometres out and time trialling his way to the finish.

The 31-year-old from the Wirral, who has endured a tough year after breaking his pelvis in the Tour of Algarve in February and his wrist in May's Tour of California, dug deep as he headed to the line pursued by another man who has won a rainbow jersey in the team pursuit, Orica-GreenEdge's Cameron Meyer.

The Australian finished second, ahead of Cummings' former Team Sky colleague Juan Antonio Flecha. Joaquin Rodriguez of Katusha retains the race leader's red jersey ahead of four consecutive stages featuring summit finishes that will go a long way towards deciding the overall winner of this year's race.

The break of seven riders that produced the men who contested the finale got clear around a quarter of a way through the 173-kilometre stage from the pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela, shortly after a bigger group of 24 riders had been brought back by the peloton.

Besides Meyer, who had figured in that previous break, Flecha and Cummings, the group also featured two other riders who have enjoyed success on the track, Orica-GreenEdge’s Simon Clarke and Liquigas-Cannondale’s Elia Viviani, plus RadioShack-Nissan’s Linus Gerdemann, Thomas De Gendt of Vacansoleil-DCM,

It was a strong group, and while their advantage stood at around just 2 minutes with 50 kilometres left to ride as Argos-Shimano, hunting a fifth stage win for sprinter John Degenkolb, led the chase, only half of that margin was erased over the next 35 kilometres as other teams declined to join in the chase with some hard days in the mountains to come.

FDJ-BigMat might ordinarily have been expected to help, with Nacer Bouhanni having emerged as one of the main challengers to Degenkolb’s domination of the sprints, but the French champion, involved in a crash yesterday,had  abandoned with aroud 55 kilometres still to ride.

Coming into the final 6 kilometres, Flecha was first to attack from the front group, Cummings the leading the response as he set off after his former team mate.

Over the next couple of kilometres, the group reformed but when Cummings himself attacked, only Flecha and Meyer had sufficient energy left to attempt to chase him down – but not enough to actually catch him as the one British rider in this year’s Tour de France not to win a stage became the first to notch up a victory in this year’s Vuelta.

Vuelta Stage 13 Result  

1  CUMMINGS, Stephen      BMC   4h 05' 02''
2  MEYER, Cameron         OGE         + 4''
3  FLECHA, Juan Antonio   SKY
4  CLARKE, Simon          OGE        + 14''
5  GERDEMANN, Linus       RNT
6  DE GENDT, Thomas       VCD
7  DEGENKOLB, John        ARG        + 40''
8  DAVIS, Allan           OGE
9  SWIFT, Ben             SKY
10 MONDORY, Lloyd         ALM
11 CIMOLAI, Davide        LAM
12 LAGUTIN, Sergey        VCD
13 FERNÁNDEZ, Koldo       GRS
14 DUQUE, Leonardo        COF
15 DALL'ANTONIA, Tiziano  LIQ
16 GARCIA, Egoitz         COF
17 BENNATI, Daniele       RNT
18 MEERSMAN, Gianni       LTB
19 BONNET, William        FDJ
20 PÉREZ, Rubén           EUS

Last man home on Stage 13  

188 JI, Cheng             ARG    + 15' 24''
   
General Classification after Stage 13  

1  RODRIGUEZ, Joaquin     KAT  48h 56' 17''
2  CONTADOR, Alberto      STB        + 13''
3  FROOME, Christopher    SKY        + 51''
4  VALVERDE, Alejandro    MOV     + 1' 20''
5  GESINK, Robert         RAB     + 2' 59''
6  MORENO, Daniel         KAT     + 3' 29''
7  ROCHE, Nicolas         ALM     + 4' 22''
8  TALANSKY, Andrew       GRS     + 5' 17''
9  TEN DAM, Laurens       RAB     + 5' 18''
10 MOLLEMA, Bauke         RAB     + 6' 01''

Points Classification after Stage 13  

1  RODRIGUEZ, Joaquin     KAT         119
2  DEGENKOLB, John        ARG         112
3  VALVERDE, Alejandro    MOV         106
4  CONTADOR, Alberto      STB          86
5  FROOME, Christopher    SKY          79

Mountains Classification after Stage 13  

1  VALVERDE, Alejandro    MOV          22
2  RODRIGUEZ, Joaquin     KAT          20
3  CLARKE, Simon          OGE          16
4  CONTADOR, Alberto      STB          12
5  LIGTHART, Pim          VCD          11