Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) stunned the overall contenders and the pure climbers on the steep finish above Calpe at the end of stage 9 of the Vuelta a España, using his time trial power to tackle the four-kilometre climb, and blast past late attacker Chris Froome (Team Sky) to win the stage. Dumoulin also put enough time into Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) to take back the race lead.
Froome caught and passed Dumoulin inside the final kilometre and seemed set to win the stage but then the big Dutchman got out of the saddle and used his final drops of power to close the gap and pass the Briton in time to cross the line first.
Chaves finished well off the pace and so Dumoulin now leads the Vuelta by 57 seconds ahead of Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) who finished third on the stage five seconds behind Dumoulin. Chaves slipped to third at 59 seconds.
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The climb and fast pace caused several gaps with Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana (Movistar) both losing 20 seconds.
Dumoulin was stunned to have won and fought to catch his breath after the line. "Unbelievable," he said. "I could have never imagined this. Yesterday, I had a really bad day. The team told me just to keep going and see how it goes, and today it ended pretty well…"
The 168km stage ended with a typical steep climb to the finish but nobody expected the short climb to turn the race upside and see riders lose so much time. However after seeing much of the climb during a first passage and finally catching the 14-rider break of the day, the attacks thick and fast on the climb to the finish.
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