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press releases 06.09.2015, 22:44
Vuelta a España. Joaquim Rodriguez wins on top in Sotres

Team Katusha’s Joaquim Rodriguez took a captiving win on stage 15 of the Vuelta a España. Rodriguez attacked in the steep last kilometer of the 12,7 km long final climb to Sotres and finished with 12 seconds ahead of Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo) and teammate Dani Moreno.

Race leader Fabio Aru (Astana) finished 5th, 15 seconds behind. His smart move and the 10-second time bonus for the win moved Rodriguez now to within a second of Fabio Aru’s race lead. Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) lost 51 seconds.

- This is incredible. What a hard climb but what a nice win too. The cheering fans helped me a lot as well as my teammates. This is a phenomenal Vuelta. The whole Vuelta we were looking for this stage win. Now we have it and we even play a role for the GC. For the moment the situation is perfect for me. I miss one second for the race lead but that is not so important. In the end the strongest rider will win the Vuelta. The good feelings that I have now are more important than that red leader’s jersey. Tomorrow we have again a hard stage with possibilities. I will try again but if it doesn’t work I will try another day. I don’t want to use a calculator to find out how much time I need to take before the time trial in Burgos. In the past I calculated too much and it ended badly. I just look ahead from day to day. We came to this race to arrive on the final podium. We are on our way. Tonight we will shortly celebrate and tomorrow we will suffer again. In this Tour of Spain there are still nice things to come. The race is not over yet. One second behind Aru but 1.23 and 1.24 ahead of Majka and Dumoulin. Especially Dumoulin can still be dangerous. He lost time today but rode very cleverly and he will be hard to beat in the time trial. We’ll see, – said Joaquim Rodriguez.

The 15th stage started in Comillas and ended on the first category climb in Sotres/Cabrales. The peloton never gave a nice breakaway group of nine riders much freedom. At the bottom of the final climb the break had only a 1 minute gap, which was neutralized in the following kilometers. Nairo Quintana from Movistar was the first rider among the favorites to attack on the climb. His attack however, with 10 km to go, was quickly neutralized by the main bunch. All favorites stayed together in the group until the last kilometer, when “Purito” made his powerful attack, which brought him a nice victory.

- The last five years I finished four times in top 4 overall. Very strange but this Vuelta is the less stressful of all my Vueltas. It is hard to explain, but I hope to continue this way. Very tranquillo, - concluded Joaquim Rodriguez.

Joaquim Rodriguez is now leader in the points as well as the combination classification.
Tomorrow’s stage bring the riders from Luarca to Quiros with again a steep mountaintop finish to Ermita de Alba (185 km).

Photo credit: (c) Tim De Waele