De la Cruz climbs into lead

DAVID de la Cruz gave Etixx-Quickstep its third stage victory of the Vuelta a España yesterday, also parlaying the day’s successful breakaway into the overall race lead. It was the Spaniard’s first professional win.

He now leads the overall by 22 seconds on Nairo Quintana and his Movistar teammate Alejandro Valverde by 41 seconds. Tour de France winner Chris Froome is 49 seconds behind the leader.

De la Cruz was the best placed rider in the 12-man breakaway, and escaped with Dries Devenyns (IAM Cycling) on the Alto del Naranco, the final climb of a five-mountain day.

Devenyns suffered a misshift at a critical moment and De la Cruz leapt away to take out a spectacular home soil victory.

“It way my objective today but to be honest, I wasn’t thinking about the race leadership towards the end. I was just thinking about winning the stage,” De la Cruz said. “It was very hard to ride with Devenyns because he was very hard to beat. I can’t believe that I won.

“I felt good sometimes, other times I didn’t feel so good and I didn’t think that I would have enough to finish it off, with so many good riders in the break.

“I thought to myself, ‘let’s try and go to the end’ and I won. I’ve been close a few times and I’ve not won – but today I got the stage and the race lead, so let’s see how long we can keep it.”

Movistar’s Ruben Fernandez, who led the race after stage 3, was not worried that the team had lost the red jersey.

“We know that we’ve got many days remaining, we knew it would be complicated. Today the breakaway went in the end, they were very strong and they were quick but tomorrow will be very hard and very different,” Fernandez said.

“It’s not so bad for us, of course we would have liked to keep the leader’s jersey. Hopefully we’ll take it back.

“We rode pretty hard throughout the whole stage and they were just really strong.” – Cycling News