Alejandro Valverde wins the 17th stage of the Tour de France 2012
Alejandro Valverde of Team Movistar bagged the first victory at the Tour de France after his spectacular performance which restricted Christopher Froome and Bradley Wiggins.
The Spaniard rode exceptionally well during the 143.5 kilometre pursuit to Peyragudes and managed to gain a 19 second lead at the second place finisher.
Team Sky duo of Christopher Froome and Bradley Wiggins occupied the second and the third spots and strengthened their overall lead.
Valverde took a total of 4 hours, 12 minutes and 11 seconds to bag his first Tour de France victory this year and is optimistic for the coming stages of the race.
Thibaut Pinot of Team FDJ-Big Mat, Pierre Rolland of Team Europcar and Jurgen Van Den Broeck of Team Lotto Belisol secured the fourth, the fifth and the sixth positions respectively.
Alejandro opened his 2012 winning account with a stage 2 victory at the Vuelta a Andalucia and also secured the points classifications, combination classifications and the overall classifications at the race.
He finished second overall at the Santos Tour Down Under and occupied the third overall position at the Paris-Nice 2012 and also bagged a stage each at both the events.
The 32-year-old holds as many as ten Grand Tour appearances under his belt including four Tour de France and six Vuelta a Espana participations to his belt.
He is now 33 minutes and 38 second behind the race leader, Bradley Wiggins and occupies the 20th overall post after the stage 17 overall classifications.
Bradley is leading the category since the eighth stage and is comfortably placed to grab his first overall victory at the most prestigious cycling event of the year.
Top ten finishers after the stage 17 of the Tour de France are as below,
1
Alejandro Valverde Belmonte (Spa) Movistar Team
4:12:11
2
Christopher Froome (GBr) Sky Procycling
0:00:19
3
Bradley Wiggins (GBr) Sky Procycling
4
Thibaut Pinot (Fra) FDJ-Big Mat
0:00:22
5
Pierre Rolland (Fra) Team Europcar
0:00:26
6
Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Bel) Lotto Belisol Team
7
Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas-Cannondale
0:00:37
8
Tejay Van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing Team
0:00:54
9
Christopher Horner (USA) RadioShack-Nissan
0:01:02
10
Daniel Martin (Irl) Garmin - Sharp
0:01:11
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