In the descent of the Alto de Cotefablo, the warm-up for the final climb, Gorka Izagirre went solo. In the peloton, the men of Ineos Grenadiers caused fragmentation. Suddenly, even Primoz Roglic was in trouble for a while, but the red jersey was able to return with the help of teammate George Bennett. On the final climb, Gorka Izagirre, despite a tight lead, held out for a long time against the thinned chasing group including Guillaume Martin, Michael Woods, and Rui Costa. Once seized, his brother Ion took his chance with another 3 kilometers to go. He did stay ahead and took the stage victory in Formigal. Played perfectly by the Astana brothers.
Primoz Roglic has lost his leader’s jersey in the Vuelta. He was bothered by the cold and Richard Carapaz benefited from that. “This was a big mistake on our part and should not have happened,” said sports director Grischa Niermann. “I was cold on the penultimate climb and I wanted to put on my rain jacket, but that didn’t work out well,” said the Slovenian. And apparently, Ineos-Grenadiers had seen that. “We were a bit too far behind when the peloton broke into pieces, my teammates had to pull out all the stops to bring me back and that took a lot of effort.”I paid the price for that on the final climb” says Roglic. “Richard Carapaz smelled blood and attacked and drove Roglic out of the leader’s jersey, I had little left on the final climb to parry the attacks, sometimes you win the battle and sometimes you lose a battle. Today we lost it. The Vuelta is not over yet and we will continue to fight until Madrid. If I am tired? We will know in the coming days but now is there is a rest day first “
Stage 6 result:1 Ion Izagirre AST in 3:41:00
2 Michael Woods EF1 +25″
3 Rui Costa UAD +25″
4 Robert Power SUN +27″
5 Michael Valgren NTT +27″
6 Guillaume Martin COF +27″
7 Mattia Cattaneo DQT +38″
8 Hugh Carthy EF1 +48″
9 Gorka Izagirre AST +53″
10 Sergio Henao UAD +55″
18 Daniel Martin ISN +1:23″
20 Primož Roglic TJV +1:38″
GC after stage 6: 1 Richard Carapaz IGD 24:34:39
2 Hugh Carthy EF1 @18″ 3 Daniel Martin ISN @20″
4 Primož Roglic TJV @30″
5 Enric Mas MOV @1:07″
6 Felix Großschartner BOH @1:30″
7 Marc Soler MOV @1:42″
8 Esteban Chaves MTS@2:02″
9 David De La Cruz UAD @2:46″
10 Alejandro Valverde MOV @3:00″
