Movistar veteran Pablo Lastras took a well-judged solo win and with it the red jersey of race leader at the stage three finish in Totana. The Spaniard broke clear from a four-man breakaway group on the final climb of the day, attacking 500 metres from the top of the Alto de la Santa.
His advantage was just a handful of seconds heading over that summit, but he pushed out his lead on Sylvain Chavanel (Quick Step), Ruslan Pydgornyy (Vacansoleil) and Mikel Irizar (RadioShack) to almost 30 seconds speeding down the descent into Totana. The chasing trio did start to cooperate and eat into Lastras's advantage, reducing his lead to 10 seconds with 3km remaining.
But, having done most of the chasing, Chavanel then eased up and the three riders started toying with each other, leaving Lastras to enjoy a celebratory final kilometre as he claimed his first Vuelta stage win since 2002. Lastras dedicated the victory to his former teammate Xavi Tondo and Leopard?s Wouter Weylandt, who both died earlier this season, as well as to Movistar?s Mauricio Soler, who is still recovering from serious injuries sustained at the Tour of Switzerland in June.
All of the race favourites finished in the bunch that was led in by Nicolas Roche 1:43 after Lastras had taken the stage.
This article was originally published on Cyclingnews.com.
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