Stage two winner Esteban Chaves has successfully defended the race lead on what was a dangerous day for the red jersey at the Vuelta a Espana today. The predominantly flat day featured a technical final five kilometres with a number of sharp ramps that threatened to create gaps at the head of the race.

“It’s true,” the Colombian said of predictions. “It was a really really difficult final. You went down a big road at 60-70km per hour, then you needed to brake and then in one moment you start a 10% climb. It’s really difficult to stay in the front when it’s like this so Simon Gerrans, Daryl Impey, Cameron Meyer and Mitch Docker put me in the front.  Their work is really amazing and really important for me.”

Whilst the earlier work of Orica-GreenEDGE ensured perfect position coming into the finale, Chaves played it smart to ensure he didn’t suffer any losses. The 25-year-old crossed the line in tenth place on the same time as stage winner Alejandro Valverde (Team Movistar). He maintains his five-second advantage to Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) on the general classification standings.

“I started (the final four kilometres) alone, because the guys used all the energy to help me before,” Chaves explained. “But I just had to follow Purito (Rodriguez), (Alejandro) Valverde and Peter Sagan to try to stay with them in the final.

"The finale was very hard, with tight turns, and very nervous. But the team helped me to perfection. We expected Valverde to go in the final part.

"Of course, we're going to try to keep this jersey but we're not going to get carried away. I keep my feet on the ground. It's always as stressful to hold this jersey but I wish it continues.

"My team have a lot of experience and it helps me a lot. When the break reached 13 minutes, we saw that the most dangerous rider was the Trek rider (Irizar) who was seven minutes down. We rode to maintain the gap at seven minutes to be more relaxed. And then we let the teams aiming at victory do the job like Tinkoff-Saxo and Katusha, like you could see.

"The finale was very hard. We were on very large roads at 60 kph and suddenly we turned to face a a 10 pc wall. It was hard but my team-mates placed me in the top ten at the foot and then I was content with following the best."

Sport director Neil Stephens was pleased with the efforts of the team, who benefited from the ambitions of others to assist with the workload throughout the stage.

“It was also going to be a stage where there was a lot of people who had their eye on the win,” Stephens said. “We were able to put in a moderate amount of work until the people who were going for the stage took over and did the brunt of the work in the second part of the race.

“We also worked to look after Esteban, we had him well placed in the final and we tried to keep the stress as low as possible. It was basically a saved day for us. It was a day that was somewhat of a transition stage and now we look to continue protecting the jersey tomorrow.”