Stage 13 in the Vuelta yesterday. 3 Spanish riders, Mauricio Ardila, Oscar Pereiro and Samuel Sanchez are away and will sprint for the victory. Ardila seems to have the best sprint of the 3… After a long 4 hours on the bike he sees the banner above the road, thinks it’s the finish and goes for it! Arms in the air, victory! NO!!! Wait! Where is the finish line?!?! Sanchez takes off and wins his first ever professional race! Could it be more dramatic? :-)

As the finish from the stage was on a climb, the banner Ardila was sprinting at was there for the mountain-jersey points. And for some reason they put that banner just 150 meters before the actual finish line! A painful mistake…

Click the image below to watch the video! A truely classic finish!! :-)

A classic finish! (Source: Eurosport)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 10:56 and is filed under Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.