Edvald Boasson Hagen produced a devastating late attack on the 12th stage of the Vuelta a Espana but had to settle for second place after Philippe Gilbert snatched a last-minute victory.

Boasson Hagen was thrust into contention in a twisting and technical finale, and lit the blue touch paper with a stinging late burst on the uphill drag to the finish line. The Norwegian opened up a gap of over five bike lengths in the last 400m, but Gilbert (BMC) dug deep to haul him back and rounded the Team Sky man just in time to celebrate his first success in the world champion’s jersey.

The duo led home a sizeable front group in Tarragona which contained almost all the main GC contenders, although Vincenzo Nibali's (Astana) lead in the general classification was cut to 31 seconds after second-placed Nicolas Roche (Saxo-Tinkoff) picked up two bonus seconds in the second intermediate sprint.  Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R) was the only rider in the top 10 who wasn't present in that front group, but as his mechanical problems happened in the last 5km, he was awarded the same time as Gilbert and remains in sixth place overall.

That frantic finish was in strong contrast to the remainder of the stage, which saw Romain Zingle (Cofidis), Cedric Pineau (FDJ) and Fabrizio Ferrari (Caja Rural) attack from the gun and build up a lead of almost seven minutes as they headed east out of Maella. The peloton seemed happy to let the trio have their day in the sun and it was only when the gap approached seven minutes that Orica-GreenEdge and Lampre-Merida began tentatively hauling them back in. With NetApp-Endura upping the pace in the last 30km, their lead quickly began to tumble, and their days were eventually numbered 18.3km from home. The peloton was only back together momentarily, however, before Tony Martin (Omega Pharma – QuickStep) produced one of his now-infamous solo attacks, but the sprint teams were in no mood to let the world time trial champion up the road and his move was annulled after just 5km.

Rigoberto Uran did some sterling work to lead Boasson Hagen onto the long closing straight, and despite the 26 year old's determined dig, it was Gilbert who emerged in the dying seconds to seal his long-overdue success.

Sports Director Nicolas Portal thinks Uran did a perfect job for Boasson Hagen.

“Edvald was really disappointed when he got back to the bus because he really wanted to win for the team today. It was a really good effort from him out there but he just came up short. Rigoberto deserves praise as well because he produced a super-good lead out, as did all the guys. Although Edvald’s disappointed now, this was good for the group and it’ll give them a lot of motivation for the stages to come. They performed really well on what was a very difficult conclusion, and they’ll be going full gas tomorrow to try and make amends. We’re expecting that to come down to a bunch sprint as well so we’ll be aiming to put Edvald into contention again and then see what he can do,” he said to the Sky webpage.

Boasson Hagen is happy for the help he received.

“Rigoberto [Uran] gave me a very good lead out. We had a bit of a plan but not too precise: I had to attack earlier. I speed up as much as I could. But I couldn’t attack before. It looks like I went too early but I had to try something. I didn’t succeed. I can’t be happy with second. I always want to win," he said.