Peter Sagan won the sixth stage of the Vuelta a España this afternoon.
Before the race had left Úbeda and got to kilometre zero for the official start to the stage, there was a crash which took down Matti Breschal and saw the Rabobank rider taken to hospital for tests on his collarbone, arms and hands.
When the stage bound for Córdoba did get underway, Nicholas Borgondy, Kurt-Asle Arvesen of Team Sky and Johan Tschopp of BMC all withdrew.
Aleksejs Saramotins (Cofidis), Adrián Palomares (Andalucia-Caja Granada), Martin Kohler (BMC) and Yukihiro Doi (Skil-Shimano) broke after seventy kilometres on another warm Spanish day.
They built up an eight minute lead but with Fabian Cancellera on the front of the peloton, the gap came down to under two minutes with 38kms to go.
Martin Kohler, the Swiss time trial champion went away with 33kms to go. He was caught by the peloton led by Stuart O'Grady.
Pablo Lastras and Tony Martin took over at the front in the hills outside Córdoba as speeds reached 85km/h.
With a kilometre to go, Liquigas had five riders at the front and it was Peter Sagan, with confusion amonhst the riders who was going for it, who won it in a time of 4 hours 38 minutes wiith Lastra second and Agnoli third and Vincenzo Nibali in fourth.
Sagan said that his win was not planned: “Vincenzo wanted to go and ride at the front. “So we did it as a team and we made it a group of four from Liquigas-Cannondale in the lead in the downhill. We went flat out. We wanted to create a gap. We also wanted to make Nibali win because he would have collected the twenty second bonus, but Movistar rider [Pablo Lastras] was there with us and he forced me to go for the win.”
This is Sagan’s twelfth victory this year but it is his first one at a Grand Tour. “My wins in Poland two weeks ago made me believe that I’d be able to reach some success at the Vuelta as well”, he continued. “I’ve made it today and I’m interested to finish my first Grand Tour. I only focus on arriving in Madrid. I don’t want to make any plan for the world championship or for next year.”
Sylvain Chavenel keeps his leaders red jersey by fifteen seconds from Daniel Moreno.
Stage seven is from Almadén to Talavera de la Reina.
Picture copyright of Tour Of Spain/Graham Watson