Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo) took an emotional win atop the Angliru, soloing in to win Stage 20 of the Vuelta a Espana. It was his first win of the season, and the last of his professional career, as he brings down the curtain on his racing life with the final stage of the Vuelta to Madrid on Sunday evening.
Team Sky's Wout Poels and Chris Froome followed him across the line 20 seconds down. Another strong performance by Froome saw him maintain his overall lead and set up his Tour de France-Vuelta a Espana double.
Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) suffered after crashing on a descent but recovered enough and limited his losses to keep his second place overall at 2:15. Wilco Kelderman (Team Sunweb) dropped back on the closing climb to lose his podium place, with Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha-Alpecin) moving up to third at 2:51. Contador’s escape and win moved him up to fourth overall at 3:11. with Kelderman fifth going into the final stage now at 3:15.
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“There couldn’t be a better finish, winning on the Angliru, the end of my career, no way for a better end,” Contador said after the stage. “I knew the Cordal has had a lot of history, lots of falls, and knew I had to go with Pantano on the descent to make the gap.”
A large escape group got away early on the stage but started falling apart as soon as the climbing of the Angliru started. Contador and all the other top favourites stayed together for much of the stage but that favourites’ group shrank mightily as the steep climb began to hurt.
Finally, near the bottom of the Cordal descent - the penultimate climb of the 117.5km stage, with the Angliru approaching Contador took off with teammate Jarlinson Pantano. The Spaniard was soon on his own, passing all those leftover from the lead group. His gap over the Froome group was never much above a minute, but it was enough to give him a special victory ahead of Poels and Froome.
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