Spain's Carlos Barredo won the 15th stage of the Vuelta a España this afternoon.
The start of the race on a rainy day in Solares and started with a minute's silence for racing team founder Felix Iglesias, who passed away on Friday following an unsuccessful liver transplant. To make matters worse, his brother Jose Luis died on Saturday from brain injuries suffered in a cycling crash.
Igor Anton who was in hospital after being sent crashing by a piece of wood yesterday, did not start along with Oscar Freire.
On the road to Lagos de Covadonga, HTC Colombia's Matt Goss took the first sprint with the breakaway group of Nico Sijmens (Cofidis), Pierre Cazaux (FdJ), Oliver Kaisen (Omega Pharma-Lotto), Carlos Barredo (QuickStep), Martin Velits (HTC-Columbia) and Greg Van Avermaet (Omega Pharma Lotto).
They built up a lead of up to nine minutes before that was reduced to five on the foothills of the the Covadonga climb, which was first introduced to the Vuelta in 1983, with ten kilometres to go.
HTC Colombia's Martin Velits and Quick Step's Carlos Barredo tried to go it alone whilst further down the road, Liquigas were leading the peleton's charge up the hill. Barredo went past Velits and built up a lead of 47 seconds, riding through the rain and the mist on top of the mountain.
Ireland's AG2R rider Nicholas Roche (pictured below) , who was fifth in the General Classification, was now in a chasing group.
Spaniard Carlos Barredo kept his cool and he was first over the line in a time of 4hr 33 mins and nine seconds with Nico Sijmens second and Martin Velitts thits. Roche came in 12th with Sckleck and Sastre 3.02 behind Barredo,
Vincenzo Nibali keeps his red jersey by four seconds.
"It was a great day for HTC-Columbia all round," said sports director Tristan Hoffman to his team's press office. "Martin got in the right break, which was hard because it was a really fast start, and was up there right until the end, and Peter's done brilliantly well overall."
"Tejay [Van Garderen] is also riding an excellent race, he's a first year pro and he's still lying eleventh overall after a lot of tough climbing stages."
"It's a whole new experience for Peter, too. He's done the Tour de France once before, but he's never been so high up on overall classification in a major stage race. Today only Peter and one other rider could stay with [race leader Vincenzo] Nibali on that last climb."
"He's got into a very strong position and he and Tejay will continue to be our protected riders on general classification."
With just a week's racing remaining, Mark Cavendish continues to lead for HTC-Columbia in the points competition after taking back-to-back stages earlier in the race. The team has also won the opening team time trial and Cavendish was overall leader for the Tour of Spain's first two days.
"So far it's gone very well," Hoffman said. "We've got a lot of young guys here, like Tejay, and we don't want to put them under any pressure, but the results are coming all the same. Whatever happens from now on is a bonus."
Tomorrow's 16th stage is from Gijón - Alto de Cotobello and is 179.3 km long.
Picture copyright of Covsupport News Service. Credit CNS/KM