One day after Louis Meintjes' great fifth place, MTN-Qhubeka had a tough stage in the Vuelta a Espana. Sergio Pardilla lost time in the GC and the rest of the team finished in the gruppetto.

The 15th stage of La Vuelta a Espana would prove to be an arduous day with the race finishing on the out of category Covadonga climb. The stage winner would be Przemyslaw Niemiec (Lampre-Merida) after being the sole survivor from the days 5 man break. Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) was 2nd and Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) was 3rd as they crossed the line just 5″ down, with race leader Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) in 4th.

Team MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung had Sergio Pardilla finish as their highest placed rider in 27th position, 5’01″ down on the stage victor. Pardilla now sits in 19th on the General Classification. The rest of the MTN-Qhubeka squad all finished safely to keep our full compliment of riders in the race on a day that saw many riders retire. There was a slight scare early on in the race when both Jay Thomson and Gerald Ciolek crashed but fortunately both riders were able to make it back to the bunch relatively unscathed.

Tomorrow will be the Vuelta a Espana queen stage with no less than 5 categorised climbs of which 4 or cat 1 and the other, a cat 2. The riders are expected to have some rainfall on route from San Martin del Rey Aurelio to Lagos de Somiedo which will also make for some really tough racing.

"Today was a really tough day with lots of climbing and some wet descents we had to contend with," Daniel Teklehaimanot said. "In the final Sergio was up the road with the favourites while the rest of our team came in with the big bunch. We will rest and recover as much as we can now before tomorrow's big stage."