John Degenkolb continued his dominant streak at the Vuelta a Espana after taking a third consecutive win on stage seven.
The German (Argos-Shimano) cemented his lead in the points classification as he powered to victory on the front straight at the Motorland Aragon racing circuit.
A hard sprint following a frantic lap of the track saw Degenkolb edge out Elia Viviani (Liquigas-Cannondale) and Allan Davis (Orica-GreenEDGE) on the line.
Team Sky had dominated the run-in along the circuit access roads and onto the track itself, stretching and even splitting the peloton at one point as they looked to keep Chris Froome out of trouble and set up Ben Swift in the sprint.
As a result of the field finish Froome maintained his strong position of second overall, while Swift was unable to profit at the line taking 10th.
Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) also finished in the pack to take a 10-second lead into the toughest stage of the race thus far on Saturday.
After an uphill finish on Thursday it was time for the sprinters to return to the fray on stage seven with 164.2 kilometres of action on the menu as the Vuelta continued in the heat.
There was an attack inside 2km which saw four riders going clear, Pablo Lechuga (Andalucia), Frantisek Rabon (Omega Pharma-Quickstep), Bert-Jan Lindeman (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Javier Aramendia (Caja Rural) the men in the break.
That quartet were only afforded five minutes as a highly-motivated Argos-Shimano squad helped control the peloton and RadioShack-Nissan also helped pull the bunch along in the closing stages.
There was a crash as the pace ramped up inside the final 10km, the peloton all looking to be well-placed on the tight circuit access roads.
The break was swallowed up as they began to attack one another, setting things up for Degenkolb to add to his win tally yet again.
No comments:
Post a Comment