La Vuelta: Chaves continues slide, Haig picks up slack

A day after four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome took what appeared to be a major step toward claiming his first Vuelta a España with a sensational individual time trial win on Stage 16, the 32-year-old Brit lost time to main rival Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) of Italy on a day won by Stefan Denifl on Wednesday.

In fact, the Team Sky rider and overall race leader conceded 42 seconds to the 2010 Vuelta winner and now holds a lead of just 1:16 with just four stages remaining.

For Colombian climbing specialist Esteban Chaves, who was Orica-Scott’s for a podium following the second rest day, it was a second straight day of major time losses.

Chaves, who fell from fifth to ninth overall (+6:40) after finishing 45th on Tuesday, finished 43rd on a brutal day on the slopes to drop to 12th on GC at 10:46 off the red jersey and — more importantly — 8:33 off the podium.

“I was really hard, too much I think,” joked Chaves after the 40km TT finish 48 hours ago. “I knew from the beginning it was going to be a really hard day for me and it’s like this. I was prepared for that and it is what it is. Lucky for me, it is over now.”

One bright spot for Orica continues to be the performance of Australian Jack Haig.

Tour of Poland stage winner finished in 12th position after an aggressive day of racing, which included his own attack atop the penultimate climb to bridge across to team-mate and breakaway rider Magnus Cort.

Although the two-year pro, who celebrated his 24th birthday on the day (September 6), was eventually caught with three kilometres to go, Orica sports director Neil Stephens was pleased with the effort and is ready to reload.

“Finishing in the top 10, we’ve done that before on a number of occasions and so we wanted to get on the front foot to try to move up or go for a stage win,” said Stephens.

“Being aggressive, we knew had its risks and may in fact trip us up in the end but we were willing to try it,” he continued.

“We identified early on that Jack was going really well after his stage win in Poland. He has done some great work already this Tour of Spain and he deserved to have the opportunity on his own.”

For full stage and race results click here.