Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) has recognised that after two wins in five days on the Vuelta a Espana’s two key summit finishes to date and a return to the leader’s jersey to boot, Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) has become a key rival in the battle for the overall.
A stage winner himself at Vejer de la Frontera, Valverde and his co-leader Nairo Quintana finished fifth and ninth respectively, 11 seconds down on Chaves, on stage 6’s third category finish, and were thus unable to finish off Movistar’s hard work - together with Giant-Alpecin - on the rolling roads of north-east Andalucia that preceded the draggy final climb to Cazorla.
Now 49 seconds down on Chaves, Valverde says Chaves was a rival they would have to watch very closely in the stages to come.
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“Attacking like that, right at the bottom of the climb, and staying away all the way to the finish shows he’s in great form and a big rival,” Valverde told reporters after the stage.
“There’s a lot of the Vuelta to go, but we can’t afford to underestimate Chaves at all.”
Valverde nonetheless emphasised that the stage 6 final climb itself “was not as hard as we expected” and that Friday’s much longer climb to the Alto de Capileira in the Alpujarras region will probably produce a very different kind of result with much bigger time differences.
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