The great pedal stroke Alejandro Valverde has had since the very start of the 2013 Vuelta a España was proven once again on Sunday at the uphill finish to El Chaparral in Valdepeñas de Jaén. Stage eight offered a lumpy finale as the race climbed towards the Collado de Frailes (Cat-2) with just 15 km from the finish.

The Movistar Team leader crossed the finish line 2nd behind an impressive Dani Moreno (Katusha), jumping away into the first slopes of the decisive hill gaining some meters Valverde could not close. With help from his teammates, Valverde was in a great position at the start of the climb. Luis León Sánchez (Belkin) and Edvald Boasson Hagen (Sky) got away from the peloton, but got neutralized by Herrada, Capecchi and Javi Moreno together with Katusha.

Valverde's tenacious effort wasn’t overtaken by Joaquím Rodríguez (Katusha), who was at Valverde’s wheel and finished 3rd. Valverde’s performance today, allowed him to jump into the 4th place overall, two seconds behind Nibali who is third and twenty seconds behind the new GC leader Moreno. The standings could change tomorrow in one of the most demanding stages in this year's Vuelta: day ten, the last one until the first rest day, over 186km from Torredelcampo to the HC Haza Llana climb (16km at 5%, with maximum slopes of 18%), an unknown climb preceded by the more classic Alto de Monachil (Cat-1). The Movistar boys will get into the Granada mountains in the lead of the teams' classification.

Alejandro Valverde thinks it was a really hard stage and he couldn’t follow strong going Daniel Moreno from Katusha.

“It was a really hard finish and we tackled it in the best way. The team worked hard into the penultimate climb to keep all attacks closed, and Katusha also put some riders at the front to complete the chase. Dani [Moreno] went really strong, I hesitated for a bit, and when I wanted to react, it was impossible to get to his wheel. Dani is, together with Purito [Rodriguez], the best rider in such finishes, an amazing rider – I’ll take my hat off to him, they proved to be in really great condition. It seems like the story is up to the two of them and me in these uphill sprints, but there's still a long way to go in the race. Even though Dani is gaining time, we get some seconds day after day and we're happy with that. The real mountains will start tomorrow. It will be quite a harder stage than the previous ones and we'll see how we really feel."