Contador ends career with fairytale solo Vuelta a Espana stage win

Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo) has pulled down the curtain on his career as he wanted to, taking a hard-earned solo stage victory Saturday at the Vuelta a España on the Angliru, Spain’s hardest climb.

The Spanish Grand Tour champion has already been a winner on the Angliru back in 2008, en route to his first overall victory in the Vuelta a España. This time, though, it was Contador’s first win in over a year, Spain’s first in this year’s Grand Tour and, with only the ceremonial stage to Madrid remaining on Sunday, a victory that has arrived on the last day possible for him to triumph.

Constantly on the attack in this year’s Vuelta after a surprising setback in Andorra when illness caused him to lose two and a half minutes on the overall, Contador’s final flourish started with a well-calculated attack on the tricky descent of the Cordal, alongside team-mate Jarlinson Pantano.

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Working his way back to the remnants of the early break with Pantano, Contador finally went for broke five kilometres from the summit. After opening up a gap of around 90 seconds at one point on the leader’s group, the Spaniard’s advantage shrank significantly on the upper slopes of the Angliru when Team Sky’s Wout Poels and Chris Froome shook off Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) and Wilco Kelderman (Team Sunweb) behind.

Visibly flagging in the last kilometre, Contador crossed the line with just 17 seconds to spare on Poels and Froome, but it was enough for him to produce his pistolero salute one last time in his career.

“There couldn’t be a better finish, winning on the Angliru, right at the end of my career,” Contador, finally fourth overall but set to stand on the Madrid podium as the winner of the Vuelta’s most Combative rider classification, told Spanish TV.

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