Stage 17: Ciudad Real - Talavera de la Reina 193.6km

Anthony Roux (FRA) Francaise des Jeux wins from a 5 man break, despite the hard efforts of the sprinters chasing teams. Team Milram was out in force (Along with Columbia-HTC, Liquigas) working to bring the break back. You could definitely see how hard the effort was in all the riders faces. It seemed like they were going to catch the break... the gap was closing rapidly in the closing kilometers:

8 km - 60+ sec
7 km - 43 sec
4 km - 29 sec
3 km -
2 km - 17 sec
1 km -

Just after 2 km to go you could see the break away riders coming out of a almost 180 degree corner, while the peloton was about to enter it.

It was a dramatic finale.

Read Team Milram Report here (Deutsch)

View video of last km here

Friday will be a tough mountain stage. A 28 km time trial Saturday. And the final rolling to flat stage on Sunday stops in Madrid. Four more days of racing and Dom will have completed his first Grand Tour.

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Results

1 Anthony Roux (FRA) Francaise des Jeux 4:28:14
2 William Bonnet (FRA) Bbox-Bouygues Telecom
3 André Greipel (GER) Columbia-HTC
4 Daniele Bennati (ITA) Liquigas
5 Francisco Jose Pacheco (ESP) Contentpolis-Ampo
6 Jürgen Roelandts (BEL) Silence-Lotto
7 Sébastien Hinault (FRA) AG2R La Mondiale
8 Javier Benitez (ESP) Contentpolis-Ampo
9 Enrico Gasparotto (ITA) Lampre-NGC
10 Borut Bozic (SLO) Vacansoleil

Team Milram

14 Gerald Ciolek (GER) Team MILRAM
49 Dominik Roels (GER) Team MILRAM
104 Christian Knees (GER) Team MILRAM
114 Paul Voß (GER) Team MILRAM + 38
139 Martin Velits (SVK) Team MILRAM + 1:44
143 Matthias Ruß (GER) Team MILRAM + 2:15

General Classification

1 Alejandro Valverde (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 74:27:48
2 Robert Gesink (Ned) Rabobank 0:00:31
3 Samuel Sánchez (Spa) Euskaltel-Euskadi 0:01:10
4 Ivan Basso (Ita) Liquigas 0:01:28
5 Cadel Evans (Aus) Silence-Lotto 0:01:51
6 Ezequiel Mosquera (Spa) Xacobeo Galicia 0:01:54
7 Joaquím Rodríguez (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 0:05:53
8 Paolo Tiralongo (Ita) Lampre-NGC 0:06:34
9 Tom Danielson (USA) Garmin-Slipstream 0:08:28
10 Juan José Cobo (Spa) Fuji-Servetto 0:10:45