These are golden days in Lampre-Merida for those riders who usually support their captains. After the victory in Trofeo Laigueglia for Davide Cimolai,  Rafael Valls conquered the queen stage of Tour de Oman, reaching the summit of the Green Mountain as the first rider.

The Spaniard whose main role is to support Rui Costa on the climbs, have shown an outstanding condition in the first part of the season and it allowed him to be the most competitive rider on the final climb of the stage (5.7 km at 10.5% of average gradient), beating van Garderen (+5"), Valverde (+19") and Majka (+22").

The battle in the front of the group started during the approach of the climb when Nibali attacked reducing the bunch to 20 riders.
BMC chased Nibali down and launched van Garderen with 1.5km to go: Valls was the only rider who could follow the American  and the latter finally had to surrender to the Lampre-Merida climber in the final kilometre.

Valls conquered his second success in the career and the red jersey as leader of the overall classification (+9" on van Garderen, +19 on Valverde).

"I could hardly ask for more from this perfect day: I won the queen stage, I'm the new leader of the race and I could finalize the perfect support I received from my teammates, among whom there was a champion like Rui Costa," Valls explained. "I was aware that my form is good. In this first part of the season I demonstrated several times that I was competitive so this is a perfect result for me and for my ambitions in these races."

Sports director Philippe Mauduit said: "Valls was our captain for toda'sy stage, since he gave us so many good feedbacks in the races he did in this first part of the season. The whole team supported him in the best possible way and Rui Costa too was fantastic in giving him the necessary help on the final climb.

"We'll try to defend the red jersey, even if it won't be simple, especially in tomorrow's stage with the four passages on the climb of Bousher Al Amerat."