Froome wins time trail to stay in Vuelta contention

Colombian Quintana, wearing the race leader’s red jersey, was the last man down the start ramp but could not maintain the pace of the Tour de France victor and finished 11th in the stage, losing two minutes and 16 seconds to Froome.

After riding the time trial of his life en route from Xàbia to Calp in south-east Spain, Chris Froome goes into Saturday’s penultimate mountain stage in the Vuelta a España with an outside chance of becoming the first British rider to take the three-week Spanish Tour. “For sure, you don’t enjoy a time trial but I get a lot of satisfaction when you hear you’re the fastest”.

Frank, who finished a creditable eighth at last year’s Tour de France, found himself in a breakaway of 28 riders as the pack was content to let them go with the lead group posing no threat to the red jersey contenders.

“Quintana, with Movistar, he has a really good team around him, so it is going to be hard to beat him”.

Quintana had said early in the race he needed at least a three-minute lead to hold off Froome’s superior time-trial ability, but is hopeful of losing little more than a minute. “We will see”, Froome said.

“There is still one really tough day of racing tomorrow”.

Froome was by far the strongest time triallist out of all the main contenders and he didn’t disappoint anyone, smashing the previous best time on the course by Quintana’s teammate Jonathan Castroviejo by 43 seconds.

But Quintana and Froome, as well as Chaves, responded to the three-time former Vuelta winner’s advances and reeled the Spaniard back in as the quartet finished 3:27 down on Frank.

Following tomorrow’s mountain stage, the race is due to conclude on Sunday (September 11) with a 104km sprinters stage from Las Rozas to Madrid.

“I’m super-happy. It was my big goal when I came here; I really wanted to win a stage”, Frank told reporters.

He added: “More than Alberto, I reckon that Orica-BikeExchange will pull out all the stops”.