Alejandro Valverde bounced back from yesterday's crash with a strong showing in today's stage of the Vuelta a Espana. The Spaniard put his rivals under pressure by attacking in the finale and even though he admitted that he had no hope of holding on to the finish, he was pleased to have made his rivals nervous.

He couldn't contest the stage win, but Alejandro Valverde showed again his class and quality on stage four of the Vuelta a España - 164km from Mairena del Alcor and Córdoba - a tough one as a result of extreme heat (almost 40ºC) and two climbs, San Jerónimo (Cat-2) and the Catorce por Ciento (Cat-3), in the last 60k of racing.

The Movistar Team led the way - with Herrada, Malori and Gorka Izagirre - together with Sky, Tinkoff and Orica to neutralize the day's early breakaway and shrink the field to about seventy riders. With 25km from the finish, in a section of false flat, Valverde launched a strong acceleration to counter a prior move from Yates (OGE), Anacona (LAM) and Sicard (EUC), leaving the peloton behind. Despite the fact that the four insisted in their action as the bunch took much time to organize a decent pursuit, the gap, barely half a minute, vanished in the flat after the most technical part of the descent. Valverde was caught with less than 9km to go.

"I went ahead so the rest of our rivals could get a bit nervous and had to push behind, but I knew it was very difficult to get anywhere," conceeded Valverde just after crossing the line. "I didn't feel bad yesterday, just a bit sore after the crash, but as the blow cooled down I could see I had recovered well, and my legs did pretty fine today. We'll see how we ride in the upcoming days - we keep our tactics to ourselves, otherwise we will be giving clues to our rivals."

In the small field sprint, John Degenkolb (GIA) won convincingly while Herrada (15th), Valverde, Quintana - not in the initial results after a chip failure meant his bike was not registered - Amador, Izagirre and Castroviejo made the front group, Moreno close behind. Wednesday will take the race back southwards, with a 180km parcours from Priego de Córdoba to Ronda including the Saltillo (Cat-3), 16k from the end.