Yeison Delgado did look like a race favourite, but with his crash on stage 5, he may be suffering on this tough 123 km long mountain stage. His competitors will definitely be looking to put on some pressure, but on the other hand, there are many hard stages to go,.
There were no early attacks on this stage, either, though. The first attacks came a few hundreds of metres from the 1st mountain sprint of the day when Schwab, who's obviously given up on the overall classification after his crash, attacked. He lost the sprint to Zaugg, though, with Saldarriaga third.
Before the 2nd sprint, Oliphant, who also attacked during the 1st mountain stage, decided to give it a try. He was followed by Salgueiro, Garcia Rincon, Laverde Jimenez, Mazur and Thomson. In the end, Salgueiro and Laverde got away with Thomson shortly behind them. Mazur, Rincon and Oliphant were caught in-between.
Despite Laverde winning the 2nd mountain sprint, Schwab took over the virtual climber's jersey as he came in fourth in the sprint, just ahead of Saldarriaga.
Laverde also got first over the 3rd and last mountain sprint (before the finish) and dropped both Thomson and Salgueiro on his way. Behind, 2nd placed Quintero attacked up the mountain along with the usual bunch of 'mountain points attackers'.
While Schwab, Saldarriaga and Zaugg dropped back, Quintero kept on going despite Quiksilver and Benfica's chase. Noteworthy, Laverde, now having shown strong riding up the mountains, was just 1'03 behind before the stage's start. With 25 km to go, he had 3'30 to the peloton.
Behind Laverde - yet still in front of the peloton - Quintero had caught up with his team mate Thomson 1'20 ahead of the peloton.
Shortly before the mountain (17 km long), Quintero dropped his team mate and teamed up with Salgueiro instead. At this point, they had 1 minute and 30 seconds to the peloton.
As expected, Salgueiro couldn't keep up for long, and instead, Quintero begun his chase for Laverde who were c. 20-30 seconds ahead of him.
Meanwhile, Delgado was struggling in the peloton - not that he couldn't keep up, he just didn't have any team mates left, meaning that he had to do the work himself. With 10 km to go, he got the information that Quintero had now caught up with Laverde - a strong duo.
Benfica had been saving themselves due to Salgueiro being the break, but as he was about to be caught, they went to the front to lead the chase. In the same moment, race leader Delgado decided to attack. Schwab, Zaugg, Benfica's Colorado, Rodas and Astarloza immediately responded.
Delgado truly showed his strength - shortly after the attack, he had bridged the gap to Quintero. What he hadn't seen coming was that the late attackers Rodas and Zaugg continued their attack and went right past them. With Rodas being just 20 secs behind in the GC, he's a threat.
During the final 2 km of the mountain, Delgado tried to attack again - he had a gap of 40 seconds to close - but it seemed to be too late as Zaugg and Rodas were not sprinting for the win inside the last km.
Surprisingly, he succeeded with his attack - but also seemed to dead to sprint. Meanwhile, the peloton was coming from behind.
Zaugg is this stage's winner, though! Having attacked on all the mountains on this stage, it's amazing that he could keep it for the very steep final. Delgado takes the 2nd place ahead of Rodas.
