Director’s report from Johnny Weltz:
The first mountain stage in this years Vuelta, and it was a super-hard stage with a mountain-top finish. It started flat out from the beginning — a lot of groups went and we had our guys in all of them. But after 40km a group of six riders took off with some seriously good climbers in it. They gained a lot of time quickly and nobody really showed interest in doing the chase. They had 15 minutes when Valverde’s team finally took up the pace.
It went on all day with a very bumpy ride. It came down to two riders from the front group in the last 20km up to the finish. There was a hard selection where several favorites lost there chances in this year’s Vuelta.
We had Dan and Tommy D in front all the way up the climb, with Dan dropping out of a small front group with 3km to go. Tommy did a solid ride up there to the very end. There were a few moments when he was off the back but he quickly regained the front group again. Only a few of the best riders were left so he climbed up to fourth on GC after another super-performance today — only 13 second down on GC!
Team Garmin-Slipstream, stage 7
1. Damiano Cunego 6h04.54
11. Tom Danielson +0.50
14. Dan Martin +1.29
58. Ryder Hesjedal +10.42
90. David Millar +16.57
93. Christian Meier +18.39
100. Tyler Farrar
169. Martijn Maaskant +29.20
174. Svein Tuft
186. Julian Dean +29.32
Team Garmin-Slipstream, GC
1. Cadel Evans 31h05.02
4. Tom Danielson +0.13
32. Dan Martin +7.04
62. Ryder Hesjedal +15.40
67. David Millar +16.21
81. Tyler Farrar +19.44
132. Svein Tuft +31.08
148. Christian Meier +36.06
160. Julian Dean +39.25
187. Martijn Maaskant +57.12
