Nairo Quintana (Movistar) has taken a potentially decisive step towards outright victory in the Vuelta a Espana on Sunday after forming a successful alliance with Alberto Contador (Tinkoff) that opened a major gap on arch-rival Chris Froome (Sky).
In a dramatic breakaway of 14, Quintana, Contador and the rest attacked almost as soon as racing had begun on the stage.
After three mountain passes and a daylong pursuit, Froome lost two minutes and 37 seconds to the Colombian at the finish line and is now 3:37 overall, a time gap that could spell curtains for the Briton's chances of taking both Tour and Vuelta in the same year.
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Nothing can be ruled out after such a dramatic stage like Sunday's in any case, which saw Froome and Sky, having controlled the Vuelta well for the first two weeks, suddenly received a serious blow. And Quintana, whilst a decidedly more cheery rider than he has been for the last week when giving interviews and wishing journalists "a very good evening" before he left the leader's press conference, was cautious about what the overall implications are.
"There a long way to go yet, and I have to be very careful," Quintana said.
"There's the big time trial and we will have to watch what happens.
"This attack was not planned in this way" - his teammate Alejandro Valverde said the original idea was to attack on the last ascent - "but we used the moment we could and it worked out fine."
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