Team Sky's Richie Porte won this afternoon's fifth stage of the Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco (Tour of The Basque Country) this afternoon.
A 166km stage from Eibar to Beasain, eventually saw nine riders in Izagirre, Herrada, Costa, Silin, Talansky, Moreno, Cherel, Navarro, Didier, Fuglsang, get away.
With 76kms to go, this group, some of whom had ideas about affecting the leaders jersey of Serge Henao going into tomorrow's 24km time trial end to the race, were a minute and eight seconds ahead of the Team Sky led peloton as they started another lap of a circuit in Beasain.
The rain gave way to sunshine and back to rain again as Omar Fraile went off the front of the peloton with just under sixty kilometres to go, to try and catch the escapers.of Costa, Herrada, Talansky, Navarro and Fuglsang,
The Caja Rural rider was successful and took over at the front of the race for the final fifty kilometres at the Oleberria climb.
With fourteen kilometres to go and the sleet coming down, he was 54 seconds ahead of a thirty rider peloton again led by Team Sky.
The pace set by Sky did not provedtoo much on the 12.1% olabarria climb for the final time for Fraile as he increased his gap from sixteen to twenty seconds.
But with six kilometres to go, Fraile was caught by Samuel Sanchez, Porte, Spilak, Quintana and the race leader.
Sanchez, who was 47 seconds down on the race leader, started on the descent followed by Henao.
Into Beasain for the final time and Sanchez took his turn at the back as Richie Porte shot away with 1.3kms to go.
The Australian took the final hairpin bend and won the stage in a time of 4.40.43. Four seconds later, Sanchez came in second ahead of Henao, who leads Quintana by six seconds going into tomorrow's final time trial.