Katusha's Daniel Moreno won the fourth stage of the Vuelta a España this afternoon.
Stage four saw the race move in to the mountains as it made its way along a 172km long route from Baza to Sierra Nevada.
The first climb of the day was the category one Alto de Filabres and saw Kim de Kort of Skil Shimano over the summit first and taking the ten points on offer.
Seven riders had got away after 15.2kms and had got eight minutes clear when we got to the intermediate sprint at Huéneja with 76kms gone. Leopard Trek rider Thomas Rohregger took the sprint and took over as the virtual leader on the road from yesterday's winner Pablo Lastras.
They went over the third category Puerto de los Blancares with De Kort adding three more points to his tally before Mark Cavendish retired from the race.
The escapers started on the 23km climb to the Sierra Nevada which has an average gradient of 5.7% with a 3 mins 45 second lead. This caused a split in the leaders with Rohregger, Bonnafond, Matthew Busche and Vorganov dropping de Kort, Toribo and Bagot.
Thomas Rohregger took four points on the second intermediate sprint at Pinos Genil.
David Moncoutie, who last won when La Vuelta visited Sierra Nevada, got into the chasing group of twenty riders who were a minute and sixteen seconds ahead with 8kms to go.
The final King Of The Mountains points were available at the finish on the hors category Alto de Sierra Nevada. Chris Anker Sorensen had bridged the gap and the Saxo Bank rider was being chased by Daniel Moreno who had come out of the peleton to mop up the rest of the escapers apart from Guillame Bonnafond who was hangng on to the wheel or Sorensen.
Bonnafond had dropped off the back with two kilometres to go and Moreno caught Sorensen and then went onto win the race in a time of 4hr 51, 53 secs. Anker Sorensen was second with Daniel Martin of Garmin riding superbly to get third place.
Bradley Wiggins finished 18th, Nicholas Roche 36th, .
Sylvain Chavenal (pictured below) now has the leader's red jersey and leads Moreno by 43 seconds. Daniel Martin is up to 11th, Chris Froome is 20th, Bradley Wiggins 21st, Nicholas Roche is 26th and Ian Stannard 144th.
Tomorrow's fifth stage is the second longest of La Vuelta at 200km and is from Sierra Nevada to Valdepeñas de Jaén.
Picture copyright of Covsupport News Service. Credit CNS/KM
Picture copyright Tour Of Spain/Graham Watson