Contador and Valverde shine in Valenciana

By Monika Prell

Alberto Contador, winner of the fourth stage of the Vuelta a la Comunidad Valenciana, showed that the pivotal stage was a course that suited him. "I get along very well with the Alto de Campello, I know it already from the last two years and finally I could defeat it and win the stage." According to todociclismo.com, the 24-years-old Discovery Channel rider, who lost time on stage two, complained that he could not "struggle for the yellow jersey due to the fall [during the second stage], but I had a lot of ambition to win the stage for my team, which fought a lot to help me."

Alejandro Valverde, who took over the yellow jersey from sprinter Daniele Bennati, said that Saturday's last stage will be complicated. He will have to struggle for the bonus seconds in the sprints because the Slovenian Tadej Valjavec - second in the overall standing - is only at two seconds behind. Valverde sees him as his "biggest rival because he has a very strong team which is working very well in the sprints.

"The danger will not be to sprint, but to position as well, but we will take the risk." The Caisse d'Epargne rider considered today's stage as "very difficult, but we had one of us in front [Pablo Lastras] and so we only had to work a little bit until the final. The last part of the race has been difficult because I had to pull the others all the time and we had adverse winds, so I went a bit slower with the idea to have still power for the finish because I thought that the others might beat me in the final sprint if I used too much power."