Evenepoel crashed on a tight succession of corners with 50 kilometres remaining on the stage, slipping out and hitting the ground at speed.
He quickly picked himself up, with teammate Ilan van Wilder stopping to assist the race leader. Evenepoel shared some frustrated words with a race commissaire on the side of the road, but remounted quickly and rejoined the peloton.
A tear to his jersey on his right leg and some abrasions were the worst of the superficial injuries for the young Belgian star, and he appeared free in his movements for the remainder of the stage.
“It didn’t affect me at all. I felt really fresh again today after yesterday’s more easy day,” Evenepoel said of the crash.
“Crashes are a part of cycling, so tried to deal with it as relaxed as possible and as calm as possible.”
“I think the south of Spain is known for slippery roads when it’s not wet. When I saw my hand, my arm and my leg, they were completely black so there must have been a lot of oil and grease on the road.
“I think it was a bit of a typical crash, a bit the same as Julian had yesterday, but that’s life,” he said. “I just could not doing anything, the front wheel went off and at such a speed you cannot control it, but that’s cycling life.”
The breakaway was over 10 minutes up the road and almost guaranteed of taking the stage victory, but a fierce GC battle still remained for Evenepoel on the final climb of Penas Blancas.
Jumbo-Visma and Movistar set a hard tempo on the early slopes of the climb before QuickStep Alpha Vinyl took over midway up the climb with the red jersey in tow.
Enric Mas (Movistar) was the first of the big GC names to launch an attack, with Evenepoel following alongside Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana-Qazaqstan) as they created a brief rift to the rest of the contenders.
INEOS Grenadiers would try to dislodge riders with strong surges from Carlos Rodriguez and Tao Geoghegan Hart, but the group largely remained together under Evenepoel’s control until the final few hundred metres, when a surge from the race leader saw him distance Lopez and Rodriguez by a few seconds.
Mas, Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) and Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) finished on the same time as Evenepoel, who maintained his two minutes and 41 second lead over Roglic in second.
La Vuelta continues with Stage 13, a rolling stage from Ronda to Montilla that will finish on a tricky uphill section that may take the race outside the capabilities of the pure sprinters. Watch from 10.50pm AEST on SBS and SBS On Demand.
