Quintana takes queen stage at Colombia; Lopez secures overall.
Quintana powered past younger rivals as they played cat and mouse in closing phases of the stage.
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Nairo Quintana (Movistar) out-climbed fellow Colombians Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana), Egan Bernal, and Ivan Sosa (both Team Sky) in the summit finish of Tour of Colombia’s sixth and final stage, Sunday. Third on the stage was sufficient for Lopez to win the GC by four seconds.
The 173.5-kilometer stage finished at 7,990ft, atop of the 15.5km climb of Alto Viva Palmas, and came down to a thrilling final battle. After a flurry of attacks lower down the climb by Quintana, Lopez, and Winner Anacona (Movistar), the large lead group had been whittled down to Quintana, Sosa, Bernal, and Lopez in the final kilometers.
Sosa and Lopez pulled away from Quintana and Bernal in the final stretches of the climb and marked each other out, waiting for the other to make the first move. This allowed Quintana to make it back to his rivals and power past them with 1km to go, taking victory by eight seconds. Sosa and Lopez finished on the same time in second and third respectively.
Bernal, Rigoberto Uran, and Daniel Martinez (both EF-Education First) completed an all-Colombian top six on the stage.
Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep) went into the stage as overall race leader, however, his slim eight-second advantage in the standings crumbled as he cracked on the relentless final climb, and he finished seventh on the overall. Lopez won the GC by four seconds over Sosa, with Martinez rounding out the podium.