Road: Leipheimer As Good As Gold

American Levi Leipheimer regained the Vuelta a Espana’s overall lead on Sunday, finishing Stage 8’s 151km test to Pla de Beret in eight place and securing the overall leader’s jersey by 21 seconds over his teammate Astana Alberto Contador. Leipheimer, who first appeared in the leader’s golden jersey after winning Stage 5’s ITT, elected not to defend his lead actively, instead conserving his energy to support his team captain Contador, thus conceding the race lead to France’s Sylvain Chavanel the next day. But after a mountainous Stage 8, including a late-stage, 6.2km category one climb that separated the contenders from the pretenders, a top-form Leipheimer held strong with select group of riders (including Tour de France Champion Carlos Sastre), finishing 39 seconds down on stage winner David Moncoutie and just five seconds arrears of an elite group containing Contador, Alejandro Valverde, and Igor Anton. The effort was enough to put him back in gold.

Ask whether he was still riding for Contador or if the team had perhaps changed strategies, Leipheimer was quick to respond that the team was still focused on Contador: “Alberto has an acceleration uphill like nobody else has. You can see it when he attacks. Maybe only a good Valverde can follow him then. Alberto won the Tour and the Giro and is the best climber in the world. He is the number one captain on the team. I just have to follow everyone right now as I am ahead in the classification, but in the end, Alberto will be the captain. The final climb yesterday and the final climb today were not so hard. They are not steep and that big time differences can’t be made. Although I’ve never seen the Angliru [Stage 13’s monstrous hors category mountain finish that includes pitches as steep as 23%!], I am convinced that the mountains in Asturias are another story…. It’s a long way to go. Now we have the leader’s jersey and everybody will look to us to control. There’s a lot of work to do.”