Splendid Simon Yates wins stage 6 of the Vuelta after opportunistic attack

Yates, the Orica-BikeExchange rider who was banned for four months earlier in the season after testing positive for a banned asthma drug, attacked on a final climb in the last five kilometres of the 163km stage from Monforte de Lemos to Luintra in the province of Ourense.

Latching onto an 11th hour move by veteran Spaniard Dani Moreno (Movistar), Yates rode past his more experienced rival before catching lone leader Mathias Frank (IAM Cycling) ahead of the summit.

Switzerland’s Frank, the last man standing of an 11-man break which formed after a frantic opening 40km of racing, was unable to hold the wheel of the 24-year-old Briton. Yates crested the summit with a decent gap over his pursuers before zipping down to the finish to hold on to the win by 20 seconds over Spaniard Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana).

Italian Fabio Felline (Trek-Segafredo) brought a five-man group including both Moreno and Frank over the line two seconds behind Sanchez before Spain’s Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) led the peloton of race favourites home 29 seconds down on Yates.

Snaring six bonus seconds over the line, Yates also moved into the top ten at the expense of Moreno – a top ten which also includes fellow Brits Chris Froome and Peter Kennaugh of Team Sky.

Colombian Darwin Atapuma (BMC) still leads Spanish veteran Valverde by 28 seconds in the general classification, with Froome, the triple Tour de France champion, poised in third place four seconds behind.

The presence of two riders who posed a threat to Atapuma’s red jersey – namely Jose Mendes (Bora-Argon18) and Alberto Losada (Katusha) – meant BMC gave the break little leeway as the race left behind the province of Galicia for the first time and started a series of climbs in the final third of what proved to be a very tough stage.

With the gap dropping below two minutes, Spaniard Omar Fraile of Dimension Data broke clear of his fellow escapees ahead of the only categorised climb of the day. Fraile, winner of the polka dot jersey in his maiden Vuelta last year, crested the summit of the Cat.2 Alto Alenza with a minute over five chasers in Frank, Losada, Andrey Zeits (Astana), Laurent Didier (Trek-Segafredo) and Jan Bakelants (Ag2R-La Mondiale).

The peloton now trailing Fraile by three minutes, Yates’s Orica-BikeExchange team came to the front to help lead the chase alongside Movistar. After Losada overcooked a tight bend on the descent, a tiring Fraile was caught and passed by Frank, Zeits and Bakelants near the top of the next uncategorised climb with 20km remaining.

Frank attacked over the summit but his lead over the returning pack had come down to less than a minute as the business end of the stage approached.

Zeits and Bakelants were swept up on the final short climb before Moreno – and then Yates – darted clear of the pack with Ben Hermans (BMC) in pursuit. But Yates proved the strongest to add yet another landmark victory for British cyclists in an extraordinary summer.

“My team set it up really well in the beginning and I managed to time my attack to perfection in the finish,” said Yates. “It wasn’t planned but I took my chances and it worked out perfectly in the finale.”

The biggest win of Yates's promising career comes one month after his twin brother Adam, also of Orica-BikeExchange, finished an impressive fourth in the Tour de France.

Asked who of the two twins was the best, Yates remained diplomatic: "We'll see. We still have a few weeks to go. I just want to continue the good road and we'll see from there."

Yates himself was absent from July’s Tour after it emerged that he had tested positive for Terbutaline at Paris-Nice in March after his team doctor failed to file for a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) certificate for his use of the asthma drug.

Despite concluding that it was a ‘non-intentional’ violation, the UCI was obliged to hand an “embarrassed and ashamed” Yates a four-month ban which kept him sidelined from the season’s main event.

The Vuelta a Espana continues on Friday yet another rolling stage – a 158.5km ride from Maceda to Puebla de Sanabria which includes three Cat.3 climbs and numerous other challenging hills.