Denmark’s Odd Christian Eiking took the overall lead in the Vuelta a Espana on Tuesday after a mass breakaway made it home almost 12 minutes ahead of the main pack.
The stage itself was won by DSM rider Michael Storer, his second on this Vuelta, on a tangled day that caused a major shake up in the rankings.
Eiking was not alone in coming from nowhere to jump onto the podium, as Frenchman Guillaume Martin climbed to second place at 58sec. Slovenian overnight leader and double defending champion Primoz Roglic slipped to third at 2min 17sec.
Roglic suffered a scare in a fall while chasing downhill in an attempt to drop his main rivals for the overall title, but remounted and finished with seven other contenders, 11min 49sec behind Storer.
Enric Mas and Miguel Angel Lopez round out the top five, while Ineos rider Egan Bernal dropped further behind Roglic and is 4min 46sec off the lead.
Australian Storer won stage 10, breaking away from the escape group to solo over the finish line at Rincon de la Victoria in a carbon copy of his triumph on stage 7.
Nicknamed “Storer the Destroyer”, the 24-year-old from Perth was part of a 31-man breakaway until he escaped on a late climb, arriving at the Costa de Sol finish line 22sec ahead of the chasers.
