Back in the Vuelta a Espana's first rest day, longstanding Movistar manager Eusebio Unzue predicted that "before we get to Madrid for sure we'll see Alberto pull off one of his in-house specials."
Sure enough, on stage 15 of this year's Vuelta, Contador tore up the usual script and replaced it with a textbook manoeuvre of his own. The Spaniard made an attack that began almost as soon as the stage did, and which, in a snowball effect, produced a ripples throughout the Vuelta's GC. It barely matters which crystal ball Maestro Eusbio," as one Colombian journalist deferentially calls the Movistar manager [along with Campeón Nairo [Quintana] and Campeón Alejandro [Valverde], had been using prior that rest day. Unzue's Yoda-like clairvoyance as to where the Vuelta Force could lie, in this case for one inoffensive-looking Pyrenean stage, proved spot on.
Stage 15 did look inoffensive on paper, particularly in comparison with the mammoth Tour de France-like epic of the previous day, with its four massive Pyrenean cols and 196 kilometres, culminating on a household name for cycling fans of the Aubisque. That, in turn, was preceded by a 213 kilometre trek across the Basque Country, the longest stage in the Vuelta and 3,720 metres of vertical climbing - which could have been the scenario for another epic, had the peloton not collectively downed tools.
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And stage 15? A comparatively 'piffling' - but only comparatively - third category climb, followed by a second and a first, none of them steep, all of them on relatively straightforward broad, well-tarmacked roads. The last, Aramon-Formigal, incidentally, wins the unofficial prize for the dullest 'top-level' climb of the Vuelta, 10 kilometres of smooth, steadily rising A road followed four kilometres of a rougher, more challenging, mountain lane. But the last segment was hardly the usual side-of a-house-in-tarmac-format that the Vuelta organisers like to use as their final climbs..
In fact, the last ascent of the 14-kilometre Aramon-Formigal, previously climbed twice in the Vuelta a Espana, is only vaguely famous (for those looking hard for a reason) for being the Vuelta's first ever summit finish, back in 1972. That day, Spanish climbing legend Jose Manuel Fuente aka El Tarangu, already a double stage winner in the Tour de France and King of the Mountains in the Giro d'Italia, first shone in his home Grand Tour.
Earlier on the Formigal stage, Fuente went on a joint attack with Spain's Jose Grande, and then dropped Grande on the Monrepos climb. As he opened a huge gap on the field, Vuelta boss Luis Bergareche drove up behind him and pleaded with Fuente's sports director, Anton Barrutia, to tell him to stop because in Bergareche's opinion Fuente was not famous enough to warrant such a prestigious role as leading the Vuelta.
A race-defining breakaway
Contador leads the charge
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