Vuelta Stage 13: Oscar Rodriguez wins for Euskadi-Murias, Jesus Herrada keeps overall lead

Oscar Rodriguez of the Euskadi-Murias team has won today’s Stage 13 of the Vuelta – the first professional; win for the 23-year-old from the town of Burlada in Spain’S Basque country.

Jesus Herrada , who moved into the overall lead yesterday, is still in the red jersey but second placed Simon Yates of Mitchelton-Scott slashed the Cofidis rider’s advantage by half and now lies 1 minute 42 seconds behind him.

Yates attacked from the group containing the overall contenders on the climb to today’s summit finish on La Camperona together with Nairo Quintana who leapfrogged his Movistar team-mate Alejandro Valverde into third place on the General Classification.

Rafal Majka of Bora-Hansgrohe and BMC Racing’s Dylan Teuns had looked set to contest the stage win on what was a brutal final climb.

But Rodriguez bridged back across to the pair just ahead of the flamme rouge signifying the start of the last kilometre of the 174.8-kilometre stage from Carreño and flew past them, Majka finishing in second place, 19 seconds back, with Teuns third a further 11 seconds back.

The trio had been part of an escape group featuring no fewer than 32 riders – five from the Lotto-Soudal team alone – which exploded on the final climb.

Ahead of two more tough mountain stages over the weekend, Herrada, who had an advantage of 3 minutes 23 seconds this morning, now leads Yates by 1 minute 42 seconds.

Quintana – who opened a five second gap on the Briton ahead of the line - is  a further eight seconds behind, and has a four-second buffer on Valverde in fourth place.

The following two stages are bound to see a reshaping of the top 10 in the General Classification ahead of Monday’s rest day, with just 1 minute 5 seconds separating second-place Yates from Bora-Hansgrohe’s Emanuel Buchmann, who lies 10th.