Yates narrows gap on Kwiatkowski

Simon Yates dusted off his Giro d’Italia playbook as he used a late attack to close the gap on the leader’s red jersey in La Vuelta while Ben King recorded a rare victory for Team Dimension Data on stage four.

Bury rider Yates lit up the Giro in May when his attacking style was rewarded with three stage wins and 13 days in the leader’s pink jersey.

He promised to employ similar tactics in the final Grand Tour of the season and was as good as his word as he put in a dig on the climb up to Alfacar.

The Mitchelton-Scott rider took 27 seconds out of Team Sky’s Michal Kwiatkowski to cut his deficit overall to 10 seconds, leaving him third overall behind Bora-Hansgrohe’s Emanuel Buchmann who is seven seconds off red.

“It wasn’t the plan (to attack), I got carried away, but I felt good and I saw an opportunity there,” Yates said.

“I don’t really know what I was doing. Maybe I was testing the guys and was thinking someone would come with me straight away, but that was that.

“I didn’t mean to. I’m not trying to be cocky or anything, it was just one of those things and when I tried once I got away.

“It looks like I have gained the time I lost in the other part of the race, in the prologue and the other day with the little kicker, so yeah, it was a good day.”

American King took the stage victory out of the breakaway, his first career Grand Tour stage win.