Froome loses ground in Vuelta stage

Bert-Jan Linderman of LottoNL-Jumbo has won Stage 7 of the 2015 Vuelta at La Alpujarra on an afternoon when Tour de France champion Chris Froome of Team Sky lost time to his rivals.

Chaves leads Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) by 10secs, with Dan Martin (Cannondale-Garmin), whose move to Etixx-QuickStep was announced on Friday, third overall, 33secs behind.

Froome battled to 17th place on the stage but drops out of the top ten after a testing day in the Sierre Nevada mountains of southern Spain.

Belarusian Ilia Koshevoy made an attempt for a solo victory but Lindeman was quick to react and then saved his best until the final 200 metres.

Cousin had led a group of five riders up the final ascent after breaking away from the pack, but within sight of the finish line his back wheel touched Ilia Koshevoy’s front tire and he lost his balance. Froome is now 1:22 down on race leader Chaves, one second behind team-mate Mikel Nieve.

With Astana controlling the pace in the peloton for Aru, an early break of five riders was given a massive lead during the middle parts of the stage.

“It won’t really sink in until tomorrow, I think”.

“I’m really happy, another day that we get to keep the red jersey”, said Chaves. France’s Jerome Cousin of Europcar finished fourth after taking a tumble in the final straight while en route to victory.

But the real drama came a bit further down the road when Froome – one of the pre-race favourites – showed signs of fatigue from his Tour efforts to lose ground on his rivals, most notably Aru, who sat out the Tour after finishing runner-up in May’s Giro d’Italia.

“Today finished with 20 kilometres of climb”, said the ongoing race leader Chaves, acknowledging that he had passed a big test. “The team is unbelievable, they stayed with me all the stage”.

When Cousin attacked, it was Koshevoy’s turn to falter.

Saturday’s eighth stage will leave Andalusia with the 182.5km run from Puebla de Don Fadrique to Murcia largely set to favour the sprinters despite a category three climb to cross twice in the final 40km.