2012 Vuelta a España
The 2012 Vuelta a España started on 18 August 2012 and was the 67th edition of the race. The race began in Pamplona with a team time trial and ended on 9 September, as traditional, in Madrid. The 2012 edition saw the return of the Bola del Mundo mountain top finish. It was the venue of an exciting battle between winner Vincenzo Nibali and runner-up Ezequiel Mosquera in the 2010 edition. It was the first time since 1994 that the race visited the region of Navarre. The previous time that Pamplona was visited by a Grand Tour in 1996, when the city hosted the finish of a memorable stage of the 1996 Tour de France. On that occasion, the race paid homage to Miguel Indurain by passing through his home village of Villava en route.
| 2012 UCI World Tour, race 22 of 28 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Race details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates | 18 August – 9 September | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stages | 21 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Distance | 3,360.2 km (2,088 mi) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Winning time | 84h 59' 49" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Results | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The race was won for the second time by Alberto Contador of Saxo Bank–Tinkoff Bank, taking his first overall victory since returning from a doping suspension. Contador, who won the seventeenth stage of the race after a solo attack, won the general classification by 1' 16" over runner-up Alejandro Valverde of the Movistar Team team. Two-time stage winner Valverde also won two sub-classifications on the final day; by taking a sixth-place finish on the stage into Madrid, he overhauled the points tally of Joaquim Rodríguez (Team Katusha) in that classification, and their resultant switch of positions, allowed Valverde to take the combination classification – where the lowest cumulative score across the general, points and mountains classifications wins – as well.
Completing an all-Spanish podium, Rodríguez finished the race third overall, 21 seconds behind Valverde and 1' 37" behind Contador, having led the race for 13 days between the fourth and sixteenth stages. Rodríguez also achieved three stage victories, a tally second only to Argos–Shimano sprinter John Degenkolb who won five stages, the most by a German at the Vuelta. Orica–GreenEDGE's Simon Clarke became the second Australian to win the mountains classification in a Grand Tour, while the Movistar Team comfortably won the teams classification.