“The team worked a tactic today to be together when we could and to coordinate our actions – this shows we have a strong, thinking team with 10 more stages to go – to defend the Red Jersey is now our main objective”
He finished behind teammate Landa and now has the race leader’s Red Jersey. He’s 27 seconds ahead of Joaquim Rodriguez. Mikel Landa won the stage in dramatic style, after a day-long break in the mountains with six categorized climbs. Aru chased a 7-minute gap to eliminate all of his contenders from a group of nearly 20 at the start of the last two of six climbs.
Teammates Luis Leon Sanchez, Dario Cataldo and Diego Rosa worked in separate groups during the stage to set a high pace and remove rival teams from control of the race.
Favorites Chris Froome of Great Britain and Nairo Quintana of Colombia both lost important and large time chunks at the end of the day.
