The reign of Colombian Esteban Chaves and Orica-GreenEDGE in red has come to an end on stage nine of the Vuelta a Espana today. Chaves fought bravely on the category one finale as he was repeatedly attacked, but lost touch in the final 700m.

The 25-year-old still sits third overall, 59 seconds behind today’s stage winner and new race leader Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin). Joaquim Rodriguez (Team Katusha) sits in second place, just two-seconds ahead of Chaves.

“I’m really tired and obviously disappointed,” Chaves said. “I lost the jersey with 700m to the finish and Tom Dumoulin was really really strong. He did an unbelievable ride today. He is a really strong guy. I want to say congratulations to him. He won the stage and the jersey, that's unbelievable.

"I tried, I gave my best effort. I said on the first day when I won that I wanted to leave my skin on the road. That's what I did today.

"I want to say thanks again to the team, unbelievable ride again today. We will continue to try, it’s the ‘middle’ of the race and we will keep going.” 

Sport director Neil Stephens reiterated that the Tour of Spain is far from over for the Australian outfit.

“As we have been saying all along, we are not obsessed with the jersey,” Stephens said. “It’s been fantastic and it’s been an honour to have the leader’s jersey.

"I think now that we have lost the jersey we need to sit down and have a look at what we are have achieved and what we still want to achieve.

“Losing the jersey is a loss in pressure. Even though we talked about it, the red jersey has got a weight. You saw that on the shoulder of Esteban Chaves today. Now we go back to what we know, which is to work methodically to try and get to Madrid with the highest general classification we can obtain.”